March 28, 2020

Biden — right from the get-go.

Now, I have a transcript for last night's CNN town hall with Joe Biden talking about coronavirus. I guess I should go back and rewrite the first post of today, which was cramped by the lack of a transcript. But this is blogging, and that post happened where it happened. I must roll forward, and all I want to do here is talk about Biden's use of the word "get-go." I'm aware that I would never say "get-go" (other than as some kind of joke), so it makes Biden seem old fashioned and corny to me.

He used this expression last night, talking about the need for more tests for coronavirus: "[T]he tests are getting out more now. But they should be able to be available nationwide, and that should have been right from the get-go a objective of the administration."

The OED informs me that "get-go" (or "git-go") is "U.S. colloquial (originally in African-American usage)." It means "the very beginning," and the oldest usage in a sentence — from Afro-American, 1960 — is "I met him during the summer vacation and liked him from the get go." Shortly thereafter, in 1966, there's  T. Cade in Negro Digest: "I knew Dick and Jane was full of crap from the get go."

But the oldest usage is traced to 1958. It's just a song title "Git-go Blues." No lyrics. So you can't tell what it means from the context. Maybe it's something more like "get out." Who knows? Anyway, I'm writing this post because I thought it was so cool that 2 seconds after reading that I was able to play the recording, and I wanted to play it for you:

177 comments:

Michael K said...

But they should be able to be available nationwide, and that should have been right from the get-go a objective of the administration."

Ask the FDA/CDC Deep nState "experts."

Birkel said...

Imagine the students in a classroom and how a professor might feel about them when the student used corny-to-the-professor language.

Ann Althouse said...

I like that "Dick and Jane was full of crap" came up on the same day I just quoted " all that David Copperfield kind of crap" twice.

That's just the found music of blogging, but I love it.

By the way, stick to the topic.

Don't just dump random coronavirus related crap here!!!

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

The only reason I care about what comes out of Biden’s mouth is that it informs me what is it is not going on between his ears. No I don’t find his old fashioned phrases cute or amusing. I am alarmed that he is completely unaware of how stupid he sounds and there is no adult related to him that cares enough for his mental health to sit Joe down. And a good portion is my country is happy to play along with this charade in hopes it takes away the Orangemanbad that they hate so heartily. It’s a peculiar sickness in a time of pandemic. Voluntary cognitive dissonance is not how I foresaw Democrats reacting to Trump but that’s what we have.

Ann Althouse said...

"Don't just dump random coronavirus related crap here!!!"

That refers to something I deleted, not to the comments above.

Feel free to talk about Biden's statement that somehow the Trump administration was not at first concerned about the capacity to do testing.

Bay Area Guy said...

"But they should be able to be available nationwide, and that should have been right from the get-go a objective of the administration."

What a buncha malarkey!

Even the CDC says it is not a priority to test folks who have no symptoms.

Mark said...

Right from the get-go, there ought to have been millions of tests sitting on the shelf for something people didn't know existed.

Well, here's what Trump did have from the get-go:

December 31: China reports the discovery of the coronavirus to the World Health Organization.

January 6: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued a travel notice for Wuhan, China due to the spreading coronavirus.

January 7: The CDC established a coronavirus incident management system to better share and respond to information about the virus.

January 11: The CDC issued a Level I travel health notice for Wuhan, China.

January 17: The CDC began implementing public health entry screening at the 3 U.S. airports that received the most travelers from Wuhan – San Francisco, New York JFK, and Los Angeles.

January 20: Dr. Fauci announces the National Institutes of Health is already working on the development of a vaccine for the coronavirus.

January 21: The CDC activated its emergency operations center to provide ongoing support to the coronavirus response.

January 23: The CDC sought a “special emergency authorization” from the FDA to allow states to use its newly developed coronavirus test.

January 27: The CDC issued a level III travel health notice urging Americans to avoid all nonessential travel to China due to the coronavirus.

January 29: The White House announced the formation of the Coronavirus Task Force to help monitor and contain the spread of the virus and provide updates to the president.

January 31: The Trump Administration:
•Declared the coronavirus a public health emergency.
•Announced Chinese travel restrictions.
•Suspended entry into the United States for foreign nationals who pose a risk of transmitting the coronavirus.

January 31: The Department of Homeland Security took critical steps to funnel all flights from China into just 7 domestic U.S. airports.

February 4: President Trump vowed in his State of the Union Address to “take all necessary steps” to protect Americans from the coronavirus.

February 6: The CDC began shipping CDC-Developed test kits for the 2019 Novel Coronavirus to U.S. and international labs.

February 9: The White House Coronavirus Task Force briefed governors from across the nation at the National Governors’ Association Meeting in Washington.


As it is, it looks like the delays that did happen were due to the usual bureaucratic suspects, like FDA, in taking an obtuse "the rules are the rules" approach to all this. And some of them still are.

Ryan said...

Can we talk about trumpeter Lee Morgan? His rendition of "I Remember Clifford" just blows me away. Got addicted to heroin (as did so many jazz greats), shot by his wife after being ravaged by drugs. Great documentary on him on Netflix.

Narr said...

My suthen aunts and uncles (I'm a mid-Boomer) used the expression "we got to get gone" sometimes to express urgency.

Narr
And I still do

Mark said...

Yesterday or the day before -- everything seems to blend together -- I linked to an AA post from January 29 (or was it the 28th?) about the coronavirus coming from Wuhan.

Few if any of the people here were expressing the kind of urgency or alarm we are seeing from people today, especially the hindsight demagogues like Biden.

Ryan said...

"Clifford" refers to trumpeter Clifford Brown. Died in a car accident at age 25.

I Have Misplaced My Pants said...

I would suspect that 'get-go' comes from 'get going,' with the related connotation of the beginning of a journey, and I do hear people use that phrase, and sometimes I hear it shortened to 'from the get,' and not among the ancients.

I am bored and isolated and don't feel like doing any of the things I'm supposed to be doing, and it's hot and humid and I don't want to take the kids to the [still allowed] playground but I am going to get going on doing that soon.

Normally on a Saturday we would take the interested kids, which is about 2/3 of them, to browse estate sales, which is one of our latest hobbies, but here we are.

JAORE said...

Reporter: VP Biden, what would you have done differently than that bad, bad Orange Man?

VP Biden: I'd have done it righter, not wronger. I'd have been woker, not racister. I'd have ... er... second thing...Nancy was a good dancer. And I'd have put the git in git-go.

Mark said...

In hindsight, instead of at the end of January, we SHOULD have sealed the borders to anyone who had been in China on or before January 17. That was barely three weeks after China admitted to the virus' existence.

But there was NO ONE who foresaw the need at that point.

chuck said...

Biden the kabitzer.

JML said...

I think I heard/saw this in a "Dirty Jobs" episode several years ago; it was something like this - Mike Rowe was working with a couple of good ol' boys who ran a primitive lumber mill. They used mules to haul the logs out of the forest. One of the guys tells Mike to "Get yur scoot on!" Mike says ? The guys says, "Hurry up."

Automatic_Wing said...

He probably picked it up from Corn Pop, back in his lifeguard days.

LA_Bob said...

Yeah, Biden --- right from the get-go:

https://althouse.blogspot.com/2019/04/bidens-announcement-video-is-anchored.html

c365 said...

We should have had mass production of immediate testing for a new virus right from the beginning.

Think about that.... And the President wants it all to be his job. He'll identify every possible issue and chase it down with immediate action because he'll know it might pan out into something.

So right from the getgo he's on it. With mass production. Just waiting to happen.

I am Getgo

Ken B said...

Get go is malarkey.

Ryan said...

Pianist on Git-Go Blues is Wynton Kelly. Same pianist that playedon Miles' track Freddy Freeloader (from the greatest jazz album of all time), and he plays that amazing blues solo at about 45 seconds in.

Francisco D said...

Althouse said: Don't just dump random coronavirus related crap here!!!

Especially since we have a toilet paper shortage!

Fernandinande said...

Even the CDC says it is not a priority to test folks who have no symptoms.

NYC Dept of Health says "There is no reason to test asymptomatic persons or mild-to-moderately ill persons who are not hospitalized, including HCW or first responders."

The experts agree!

JaimeRoberto said...

It sure would be nice to have a magic wand one could wave to produce and distribute tests for everyone immediately. It doesn't work that way in the real world even in the best circumstances. And in the real world with a large suffocating bureaucracy, it works even worse.

JPS said...

Biden's point comes back to the question of good faith criticism versus shameless opportunism. I realize that we're talking about a presidential campaign, and some of the latter is inevitable.

If you want to ask what we've done well, and what we need to do much better next time, it is fair to say early testing was a key weakness, and that more information sooner would have been a big help, as it was for South Korea. (We should also acknowledge that other elements of the RoK's response would probably fly here due to civil liberties concerns.)

And now that we've stated the very, very obvious: OK, Mr. [former] Vice President: How would you make sure we achieve that next time? How would you have achieved it this time? Because it's one thing to watch it play out, then criticize after the weakness is known; it's another thing to say, Hey, CDC and FDA: You need to permit and encourage testing at the lowest level possible.

Biden's criticism reminds me a bit of an interview with then-candidate, General (ret.) Wesley Clark, saying that if he were president, unlike Bush, he'd have caught bin Laden already, long since. Even his interviewer Stephanopoulos was objective enough to look disgusted and call him out on it by asking exactly how he could know that, and what actions he would have taken to make it happen.

D. B. Light said...

I don't think your sources are all that accurate -- I heard "get go" from at least the early 50s and the people using it were rural whites.

Ann Althouse said...

"Yesterday or the day before -- everything seems to blend together -- I linked to an AA post from January 29 (or was it the 28th?) about the coronavirus coming from Wuhan. Few if any of the people here were expressing the kind of urgency or alarm we are seeing from people today, especially the hindsight demagogues like Biden."

I know. This is what I found so exasperating about watching Biden. I wanted to hear what he would do NOW. That's the test. To say we should have done more in the past or should have started earlier is so easy to do that it's just basically nothing. Prove you would have done more or started earlier and I'll care about that. Commit to something about what to do now. That's what we were pausing to say as we watched, and as we imitated his statements, mocking them, we kept using the word "get-go." It was part of a pattern of evasiveness that drove me up the wall. I did not think the word was cute. There's nothing cute here.

JPS said...

[would probably *not* fly here]

Ann Althouse said...

"I don't think your sources are all that accurate -- I heard "get go" from at least the early 50s and the people using it were rural whites."

The source only purports to search for the earliest usage in writing. It's always presumed that the word entered speech some time earlier (unless it's the case of an author coining a word — like "chortle").

Ken B said...

I think the testing debacle is pretty clearly the fault of the CDC and FDA. Should a Trump have intervened and told them they were screwing up? I think he would need to omniscient to do that. And it would have been another impeachment.

Lots of blame to go around. We need to affix it but that takes time and knowledge that we lack. Deal with the problems now, look back later.

That goes in Canada too. I loathe Trudeau. I will give him some slack.

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

“Feel free to talk about Biden's statement that somehow the Trump administration was not at first concerned about the capacity to do testing.”

Except the stage and the actors tells you more about the play than the lines spoken. A carefully (after the previous fuck-ups) managed and massaged “town hall” dumbshow on CNN. After we acknowledge that, how does anything that follows have the slightest relevance?

Mark said...

After being told that the virus originated in animals, the possibility of human-to-human transmission was not known until mid to late December.

Ann Althouse said...

By the way, Trump often says that things should have been done a long time ago. But that's in the context of actually doing something now. He's not sitting on the sidelines, watching somebody do something, and proclaiming that HE would have done it earlier.

narciso said...

nearly as helpful

Ken B said...

My Canadian friends are agog, aghast, affronted, apoplectic, and appalled that I say All I am Saying is Give Trump A Chance. I agree he should talk less. But so far his *actions* seem sane, and in line with what the scientific advisers say. And he was ahead of Trudeau and the Democrats on flight restrictions and seeing the threat.

narciso said...

the cost of that carping the ndp is likely worse though, haven't they taken a province or two,

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

After 8 years of Obama-Biden, what did THEY DO to combat and prepare?

Questions that will never be asked for 200, Bob.

Wilbur said...

"Get go" is anything but an unusual or regional usage to me. Where I grew up (east-central Illinois) and where I've lived for the last 34 years (urban South Florida) I've heard it from all ages, genders, races and societal strata.

From po' folks to judges.

Unknown said...

Here in Delaware "get-go" was once a common slang word among the older generation. I hear a certain flavor of mid-Atlantic Wilmington dialect in Biden's speech, especially his belligerent tough guy talk. He claims to be working class but it is never mentioned he attended a private high school with a 2020 tuition of $24,950.00/year. I have yet to speak with a local democrat who knows anything of Cornpop, the hair on his legs, or any of the aggressive confrontations with voters. By the way, I went to that pool from 1957 to 1960. Its rough place.

PJ said...

@Ken B, I infer that the testing debacle is the fault of the CDC and FDA by reasoning that if any Trump political appointees could plausibly be held responsible they would be household names by now. But I haven’t seen a detailed analysis, have you? As it is, there is a lot of talk about John Bolton’s reorganization of the NSA, but no apparent connection between that and the testing debacle.

gspencer said...

You didn't get that Biden's stuck in a 1964-1975/Don-Draper time warp when he thought so much of his stupid word Malarkey that he had it painted* on his bus?

*It's been since removed.

Everything about him screams "phony," from the hair plugs, the chi-chi clothing, the teeth, the Botox, the aviator sunglasses, the Amani shirts with two undone buttons. The "esteemed" "Doctor" Jill probably had a lot to do with his going-Hollywood.

In the end Joe's nothing but a lefty, a through-and-through Democrat who became wealthy through corruption of his office.

Kate said...

Wait. You wouldn't say "get-go"? Is it regional? I use that phrase all the time. Weird.

LA_Bob said...

I Have Misplaced My Pants said, "I would suspect that 'get-go' comes from 'get going,'..."

The notion of "from the get go" being of "Ebonics" origin makes sense (whether true or not). It has the ring of satire on White English.

When I was younger, I asked a number of black folks, some I barely knew, what kind of jokes black folks told about white people. Most came back with, "Bob, we don't tell no jokes about white people". One woman was more forthcoming. "I had to think a lot about what you were asking, because we don't really tell jokes about white folks. We just laugh at y'all on account of you being white!"

I have a black friend who used an interesting phrase. If the answer to a question was, "Yes", he would say, "Must is, 'cause must ain't don't seem right."

I guess when a white person says, "from the get go", it's Cultural Appropriation.

Mark said...

This is the first reference I found to it here --

viator said...
You may not want the Wuhan Coronavirus but the Wuhan Coronavirus wants you

BEIJING: Pharmacies in Beijing and Shanghai were running low on surgical masks and disinfectants Wednesday (Jan 22) as a deadly new SARS-like virus spread ahead of the busy Chinese New Year travel period. CNA

Around 7 million people are preparing to fly from China to 400 cities in 100 countries to celebrate the Chinese New Year (Chinese New Year of 2020 falls on January 25th (Saturday), and the festival will last to February 8th, about 15 days in total. 2020 is a Year of the Rat). Now is the time to stop this outbreak spiralling into a global health emergency.

1/22/20, 5:43 AM

Unknown said...

I've always thought of the term "the get-go" as being typical of the Philly/Mid Atlantic dialect. I've heard it all my life. When I went to the West coast for grad school term was a marker for locals of my "weird accent."

narciso said...

feels like the opening of that movie contagion, or the end of the first of the most recent planet of the apes iteration,

Bay Area Guy said...

@Fernandstein sez:

"NYC Dept of Health says "There is no reason to test asymptomatic persons or mild-to-moderately ill persons who are not hospitalized, including HCW or first responders."

Sing it loud, brother!

Do folks here understand the significance of this? It is pointless to test healthy, asymptomatic people. It is not recommended by the FEDS or New York. Aren't you curious as to why none of the health authorities want to test healthy people?

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

It's important we make Hunter Biden wealthy, right from the get go -- right after Obama places Biden in charge of Ukraine.

Ken B said...

Narcisco
Yes the NDP has. I really dislike them, but in fairness the party has two wings. One wing, outside the three big provinces, is generally fiscally responsible. In Ontario and BC they are much worse. In Quebec they are awful but never in power.

David Begley said...

A Trump-Biden debate would be a beat down of Biden from the get-go.

rcocean said...

I'm not from Deleware, and I'm utterly familiar with "RIght from the get-go". Maybe it was TV shows as a Kid, and I simply absorbed it. Can't think of the last time I heard it in real life, except from Biden.

Anyway, Biden should just shut up and wait till the convention. No one cares about his thoughts on the Virus Crisis are. And he doesn't really seem to have any.

Ken B said...

PJ
Reason has a new article up just recently about the CDC screw up.

narciso said...

here's the second chapter I think this ended the proxy war with Ukraine for a time, consider all the time in the world, we lost in this Cyrillic pantomime,

Fernandinande said...

Out West Magazine - Volume 11 - 1899

"When Piutey die he git go that country pretty quick. 'Bout one night, all 'lone, he go. He fly, go there. He git that country he quit fly, he walk; just walk then. Clothes? No, he no take clothes when he leave here—just take hat, that 's all. May be."

rcocean said...

Biden has always been an empty suit. So, its not surprising his Townhall is so empty and dull.

Ken B said...

I know the phrase get go well. Use it some times. It’s tarnation useful some days, yessiree Bob.

Mark said...

Estimating the potential total number of novel Coronavirus cases in Wuhan City, China
Natsuko Imai, Ilaria Dorigatti, Anne Cori, Steven Riley, Neil M. Ferguson
Report Number 1
17 January 2020 Imperial College London COVID-19 Response Team

Background

On the 31st December 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) China Country Office was informed of cases of pneumonia of unknown aetiology in Wuhan City, Hubei Province, China [1]. A novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) related to the Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome virus and the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome virus has since been implicated [2].

As of 16th January 2020, 41 cases (including two deaths [3]) have been confirmed in Wuhan City with three confirmed cases in travellers detected in Thailand (2 cases) and Japan (1 case) [4–7]. Most cases have been epidemiologically linked to exposure at a seafood market in Wuhan which has been closed since 1 January 2020 in efforts to contain the outbreak. Although both travellers have a history of travel to Wuhan City, they did not visit the seafood market implicated in the other cases [2].
Using the number of cases detected outside China, it is possible (see Methods) to infer the number of clinically comparable cases within Wuhan City that may have occurred thus far.

Summary

We estimate that a total of 1,723 cases of 2019-nCoV in Wuhan City (95% CI: 427 – 4,471) had onset of symptoms by 12th January 2020 (the last reported onset date of any case). . . .

Conclusions

It is likely that the Wuhan outbreak of a novel coronavirus has caused substantially more cases of moderate or severe respiratory illness than currently reported. The estimates presented here suggest surveillance should be expanded to include all hospitalised cases of pneumonia or severe respiratory disease in the Wuhan area and other well-connected Chinese cities. This analysis does not directly address transmission routes, but past experience with SARS and MERS-CoV outbreaks of similar scale suggests currently self-sustaining human-to-human transmission should not be ruled out.

_________________

Nowhere in this analysis does it call for producing and stockpiling hundreds of millions of masks and ventilators and medicines, or the shutting down of borders, etc.

Yet, by this time, the U.S. machinery under the Trump Administration was already taking action.

Mark said...

This much can be said --

By waiting on "the science," the response to the coronavirus was delayed.

PJ said...

“From the get-go” is a familiar expression to this Boomer, and I’m sure I’ve said it. Today, I would more readily say “from jump,” which I take to be a basketball reference.

Ken B said...

Mark
Thanks for that piece. At that time the communists were lying and destroying evidence. This report suggests that. Specifically the last sentence, which is the main thing the communists were lying about. They finally admitted to some of the lies on 21 January.

Yancey Ward said...

In retrospect, Trump should have shut down all international travel from outside the US on the day he issued the shutdown order for China.

Now, as all of you probably know, I am of the opinion that such an order on that date was already several months too late, and doing it at the right time wasn't even theoretically possible. In any case, had Trump done that and it still failed to stop COVID-19 in the US, his decision would now being critiqued as helping cause the outbreak. Trump was literally in a no-win situation with the press.

As for the testing, yes you can stockpile some needed reagents, but there is still reagents you can't make until you know what it is you are looking for- they are all target dependent substrates. That isn't Trump's bailiwick as the President- that is the bailiwick of the career professionals in the FDA and the CDC. Now, did those professionals send requests up through the chain of command between January 20th 2017 through January 1st 2020? Maybe they did, and no one in the polticical chain took took action on them- I am willing to be convinced that someone Trump appointed, or Trump himself, dropped the ball. However, I will point that the Obama Administration had also not set up the stockpiles of reagents necessary, and I see no reason to believe the situation would have been different today under another administration. However, convince me with some timely requests from people in the field.

Yancey Ward said...

I read the transcript, and can only repeat what I wrote yesterday- no politician of Biden's present standing- the actual nominee as of now for the upcoming election- has ever been so irrelevant to anything. Added in to Biden's obvious mental decline makes him a pitiable figure.

narciso said...

that's a fair point, yancey, you could see the progression going as far as south asia by that point, we were running against the clock, and we didn't know where the roadblock lay,

Mark said...

Remember -- the most important thing that we can do to combat and defeat the spread of the coronavirus and all the death and economic devastation is not to wash our hands or to socially distance or to have sufficient medical supplies.

No, the single most important thing at this time is to point fingers of blame and to complain about what should have already been done. If we can all concentrate on that, we will beat this thing in a day or two. Come on, save some lives -- bitch and moan and condemn. Together, we can do it.

Mark said...

And if we question each other's good faith and engage in more back-and-forth attacks and ad hominems, why I'm betting we can defeat all disease everywhere.

JPS said...

Bay Area Guy:

"Aren't you curious as to why none of the health authorities want to test healthy people?"

I'll take a flyer: Because even now there aren't enough tests to go around, so until there are they're going to prioritize figuring out which sick people have this thing, and which are sick with something mundane? Then later we'll satisfy our curiosity as to how many people have it who we wouldn't have thought were sick?

Or are you getting at something else?

Mark: Nice. A lot of people I know are right there with you, but unironically.

RMc said...

This is what I found so exasperating about watching Biden. I wanted to hear what he would do NOW.

There really isn't anything that Biden would do now that Trump isn't doing, so all he can do is second-guess the past. "Vote for me, because Orange Man Bad and we're all gonna die!" makes a lousy sound bite.

tcrosse said...

Trump's been a go-getter from the get-go.

narciso said...

furthermore all the obsession on gun control, climate change, and transgenderism in the debates seems kind of obscene now,

Mark said...

All this blaming Trump and saying that you can't trust him is putting a lot of people at risk. Including reports that the MSM and usual politicians want to restrict the use of very promising treatments, only because Trump has expressed optimism that they could be an answer.

Bill, Republic of Texas said...

Because of Biden's malicious lie about Trump, Althouse said Biden was disqualified from being president from the get-go.

Is that still operative?

Kit Carson said...

down south get-go is as common as rain.
the pronunciation is git-go, as in "now git!" (telling someone to skedaddle, for example, off your property. the g is as in go not as in geronimo. and the it is as in it.
occasionally you will hear ~get-go with the e in get as eh or get.

Bay Area Guy said...

Is anyone here affirmatively voting for Biden? I mean, Yes, there's a few unnamed folks here who suffer from Trump Derangement Syndrome and will vote for anyone running against Trump. Understood -- that's kinda how I felt about Hillary in 2016.

But, does anyone look at Biden, look at his 50 years in DC, look at his speeches, look at his gaffes, look at his confusion, look at his hair sniffing, look at his sexual harassment claim and say, "Boy, that is the man I want to run the country!"

Anyone? Bueller?

Mark said...

From WP -

President Trump said Saturday he may announce later in the day a federally mandated quarantine on the New York metro region, placing “enforceable” travel restrictions on people planning to leave the New York tri-state area because of the coronavirus outbreak.

Achilles said...

We are a police state now.

"NEW this morning: In the U.S., federal, state and local government officials have begun to get data from millions of American cell phones to combat the coronavirus pandemic — tracking crowds and movement, and how those things impact infection rates.https://www.wsj.com/articles/government-tracking-how-people-move-around-in-coronavirus-pandemic-11585393202 …"

Yancey Ward said...

Snake Plissken to the courtesy phone........

Wince said...

Since it's Biden, isn't the relevant "get-go" the start of the Obama-Biden administration?

Drago said...

David Begley: "A Trump-Biden debate would be a beat down of Biden from the get-go."

In any event, Biden would find out rather quickly that Trump won't just sit there and surrender the way LLR-lefty Chuck's hero, Paul Ryan, did.

Ryan literally allowed Biden to say "Republicans, always betting against America" to his face in front of the entire world...and what did Ryan do?

Not. A. Thing.

Ryan simply smiled and turned back to the moderator.

Ryan was content. His work was done. And after Romney surrendered on live TV to obama and CNN, that was it.

On one level its understandable. Both Ryan and Romney are basically democrats who just didn't want quite as much spending. They were both quite content not to put up too much of a fight against O-biden-bama.

JPS said...

Achilles, 12:39:

Thank you. I didn't know that.

That is exactly the aspect of the South Korean approach that I thought wouldn't fly here - or would at least generate intensive public debate.

So, unlike anyone I ever argue with anymore: I was wrong.

Darkisland said...

Hamer saw George Parr’s pistoleros. There were more of them this time. “Everywhere you turned there were people with guns on,” Dibrell says. One group of perhaps five was directly in Hamer’s path. Another, somewhat larger, was standing in the very door of the bank. As he approached them, Hamer didn’t even slow down. His biographers were to write that when he approached the first group, he said, “Git!,”

Means of ascent Robert caro

John Henry

Achilles said...

Bay Area Guy said...
@Fernandstein sez:

"NYC Dept of Health says "There is no reason to test asymptomatic persons or mild-to-moderately ill persons who are not hospitalized, including HCW or first responders."

Sing it loud, brother!

Do folks here understand the significance of this? It is pointless to test healthy, asymptomatic people. It is not recommended by the FEDS or New York. Aren't you curious as to why none of the health authorities want to test healthy people?



I know why. We all know why.

But confirmation bias intercedes.

PJ said...

Thanks, @Ken B., for pointing me to this Reason article. And linked there is this ProPublica article from February 28, which I also found quite informative concerning how the initial problem with the test occurred and why it took so long to fix.

Wince said...

Yancey Ward said...
Snake Plissken to the courtesy phone...

"I don't give a fuck about your war, or your president."

Achilles said...

JPS said...
Achilles, 12:39:

Thank you. I didn't know that.

That is exactly the aspect of the South Korean approach that I thought wouldn't fly here - or would at least generate intensive public debate.

So, unlike anyone I ever argue with anymore: I was wrong.


And if you say something you will get snarky questions directed at you like "Are you helping?."

Others will question our moral seriousness.

And Meade will never forgive us.

Cameron said...

I wonder if get-go is originally a shortening of "on your mark, get set, go".

Bill, Republic of Texas said...

look at his sexual harassment claim

It's not a sexual harassment claim. The allegation is forceable, penetration using his fingers. That is rape.

Biden has been credibly accused of rape. Now what do we do?

Meade said...

"And Meade will never forgive us. "

Did I say that? I think I said I'm not a forgiving person. That doesn't mean I won't forgive you. Once I've satisfied my need for a just revenge.

Rabel said...

"NYC Dept of Health says "There is no reason to test asymptomatic persons or mild-to-moderately ill persons who are not hospitalized, including HCW or first responders."

The source of that quote is in the link below. They make it perfectly clear why, at that time, they were against widespread testing for asymptomatic, non-hospitalized persons.

March 20, 2020.

WisRich said...

Since "from the git go" refers to a moment in time, is it to much to ask what the time stamp is on "git go". Then in an act of journalism, someone research his comments before that time stamp.

Mark said...

On right now, Helen Crump and Steve McQueen battle a public menace.

Yancey Ward said...

The Blob?

Kevin said...

The delay in testing wasn't due to the Trump administration, it was due to parts of the Federal government that are still under the control of "The Resistance."

Mark said...

Doctor trying to stop it tells nurse, I'm going to get my gun.

It's a Blob, man. You're Joe Biden approach of using a shotgun ain't gonna stop it.

hombre said...

Thanks, Uncle Joe. Very helpful. Never mind that Trump has had to overcome the lack of diligence of the Obot Deep State to get testing on track, or that the effectiveness of widespread indiscriminate testing is now being questioned.

Only a couple of weeks left. Barely enough time for you to finish hiding your own Easter eggs. Better hurry.

Bruce Hayden said...

Weird. I have heard Get Go for decades. Maybe most of my life, and I have spent most of my life (except for 5 in DC and 5 in Austin) in the West. Ann is from Delaware, if I remember correctly, where Biden was their Senator for decades. (Or was it Rhode Island? I sometimes have a hard time keeping these mini-states separate I my mind).

He is irrelevant here, because all that he can do is Monday morning quarterback. Still, they should have asked him why he didn’t complain about the testing having been centralized in the CDC and the masks supply not being replenished during the Obama/Biden Administration. Did he approve of those decisions at the time? Did he vocally disapprove? Or was he (most likely) unaware of them, as both of them allowed much of the bureaucracy to operate without much supervision for most of their terms of office?

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

Trump ’s new election slogan:

Think Big: - first he bankrupted his father’s company, and then a nation.

Mark said...

Run! Run away! Or at least walk very quickly. Or at a leisurely pace. Just do something, except stand there, to get away from that slow-moving piece of liver.

Yancey Ward said...

I have never seen the original movie with McQueen. I have seen "Beware the Blob"- that movie gave me nightmares at age 7. I have also seen the remake made in the late 1980s- a very decent horror film.

Drago said...

Ryan: "Pianist on Git-Go Blues is Wynton Kelly. Same pianist that playedon Miles' track Freddy Freeloader (from the greatest jazz album of all time), and he plays that amazing blues solo at about 45 seconds in."

Thanks for that comment! It reminded me of a squadron department head that I reported to that was from Pittsburgh originally, tough guy, biggest mustache ever, who was the biggest Miles Davis fan that ever lived.

He once told a German Luftwaffe exchange officer that the US had kicked Germany's ass twice before....and if we have to....we'll do it again!

I hadn't seen or spoken to that guy since 1995. I just looked him up on linkedin and sent a comms request.

So, thanks!

Mark said...

The most horrifying menace ever conceived.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjXx5XKHVTE

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

Fox News Poll Shows Joe Biden CRUSHING Trump By 25 Points in Swing Counties

hombre said...

Did he repeat the lie he told about Trump turning down the test kits from WHO that were never offered? Why not? The media would have covered for him since it was their lie (Politico) in the first place.

Mark said...

I'll tell you though -- that town should have been prepared with a lot of anti-Blob equipment.

It's a malfeasance failure of leadership for them to have not made sure that they had these anti-Blob protective measures from the get-go.

Drago said...

ARM: "Fox News Poll Shows Joe Biden CRUSHING Trump By 25 Points in Swing Counties"

LOL

Ken B said...

Nothing about the sexual assault charge?

Drago said...

Gee, the timing of that Fox News poll is certainly very interesting given that the Fox polling crew under Stirewalt are big time in the tank for Biden and dems everywhere are calling for Biden to be moved out in favor of another candidate.

Of course, ploys like this work like magic on guys like ARM who bit down hard on every single ChiCom propaganda lie in the last 4 months.

ARM, just yesterday, was telling us that the US has more virus cases than China....even AFTER the myriad of reports came out that Chinese hospitals weren't accepting new patients, were refusing to test patients for the virus while simultaneously putting bigger clampdowns on the people gathering anywhere and even shutting down theatres.

And they kicked out the media as well.....

But hey, good enough for ARM!

Too funny.

The only thing missing is ARM telling us Trump has "no path to 270"....but give him time.

Drago said...

Ken B: "Nothing about the sexual assault charge?"

Interestingly, the Stirewalt NeverTrump/Pro-Biden crew at Fox News polling "neglected" to ask whether or not the Biden sexually assaults woman story would affect the pollee's view on the candidate.

Gee, I'm sure Chris and the polling gang will be "all over" that question.

Next time.

For sure.

hombre said...

Blogger Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

“Fox News Poll Shows Joe Biden CRUSHING Trump By 25 Points in Swing Counties.”

If we were an intelligent, moral people, there would be no Democrats.

Nevertheless, polls showed Hillary crushing Trump and he has not really begun to campaign yet. Biden cannot stay housebound until November and he will occur as the grifting, doddering nitwit he is as the campaign progresses - although that may endear him to Democrats.

Char Char Binks, Esq. said...

If a jazz musician doesn’t get addicted to heroin and shot by his wife, or shot by someone’s wife, or shoot someone, is he really a jazz musician?

Drago said...

“Fox News Poll Shows Joe Biden CRUSHING Trump By 25 Points in Swing Counties.”

Biden got under 3,000 views on his last online event.....even though everyone is at home...and online.

Remember when Hillary had to bring in armies of Hollywood stars and musical acts to get people to show up at her rallies, which were touted as a sign of her "strength"?

Good times, good times.

You know, after awhile, one would think even the coyote would get wise to how the roadrunner is playing him. But nope, like the ARM's of the world, the coyotes just keep stepping into the same old traps.

Mary Beth said...

"Aren't you curious as to why none of the health authorities want to test healthy people?"

Same reason they said there was no point in wearing a mask.

Fernandinande said...

Helen Crump

Andy found out that Opie was right about "Old Lady Crump" when she and Andy met for the first time and she threw a bitch fit and told Andy to "mind your own business!" when he showed some interest in Opie's education.

And Columbo is about to arrest Robert Culp...again. That guy never learns.

Ignatius Acton Chesterton OCD said...

Given CNN’s track record, I’m sure the transcript from Biden’s town hall was the actual script they used for the town hall.

Was Donna Brazile somehow involved?

Howard said...

None of this stuff matters now that we are in a period of suspended animation. The uncertainty level is very high. I think the election will be a landslide depending on how covid 19 plays out. Althouse keeps ringing the bell, but there's no food coming, so all the people can do is drool.

Ignatius Acton Chesterton OCD said...

KenB: “But so far his *actions* seem sane, and in line with what the scientific advisers say.”

If you start the movie from the beginning, you’ll notice this is a pattern.

Like Scott Adams says, there are two movies...

Ignatius Acton Chesterton OCD said...

As for Biden’s TV booth replay commentary, I think Theodore Roosevelt’s words are appropriate here:

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."

Someone please pass this along to the usual suspects here...

Ryan said...

I had a girlfriend once who was dumb as a brick, and she signed up for Jazz History from her community college to fulfill an electice. She also didnt know English very well, so I ended up doing all her homework.

The thing I remember most is that nearly all the cats in the 50s and 60s were on drugs, mostly heroin. Some of those who abstained, like Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter, have gone on to have long productive careers. It's a damn shame. Charlie Parker died at age 35, for God's sake. Someone should have been screaming in their ears: TAKE CARE OF YOUR HEALTH.

Nichevo said...

But they should be able to be available nationwide, and that should have been right from the get-go a objective of the administration."

The OED informs me that "get-go" (or "git-go") is "U.S. colloquial (originally in African-American usage)."



So what you're saying is, Biden's performance was so painful to you, the Democrat partisan who will vote for him (despite your earlier disqualification of him) or any tomato can in the D slot, that you need to digress from the actual point of the post you were writing, to the subject of black talk.

Unknown said...

"Blogger Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...
Fox News Poll Shows Joe Biden CRUSHING Trump By 25 Points in Swing Counties"

Well, heck. Then there's no way the Democrats can even think of replacing him, right?

On to victory!

ARM illustrates the perils of the cut-and-paste argument.

Sebastian said...

Useful timeline stuff by Mark above.

And let's remember, as of January 14, the WHO still propagated the Chinese line against human-to-human transmission.

And let's remember, Dems bitched about the China travel ban, and Europeans about the Atlantic travel ban.

Sebastian said...

"the Democrat partisan who will vote for him (despite your earlier disqualification of him)"

Althouse is cruelly neutral even about her own prior opinions.

Sure, Joe lied in an egregious way, sure, she found it disqualifying once upon a time, but that was then.

Mark said...

Now playing --

Trouble finds a new kid in town in a red jacket who is tired of his family moving around because he always seems to be in trouble.

Doesn't help that his dad, Mr. Howell, is so weak.

Guildofcannonballs said...

This is a link to Ray Charles.

Drago said...

Unknown: "Well, heck. Then there's no way the Democrats can even think of replacing him, right?
On to victory!
ARM illustrates the perils of the cut-and-paste argument."

Picture ARM as an automaton that is completely covered in buttons, and the DNC and the ChiComs and the Iranians know just which ones to push.....

PJ said...

Wait, Mr. Howell is Gilligan's father?

Ken B said...

Does anyone take any poll today see? Trump will either be FDR or he will be Hoover, and we won’t know which for some time. But this election will be about his handling of the crisis.

traditionalguy said...

To win a war we need a winner in command. That little fact is swinging indie voter who won’t admit liking the harsh Orangeman from Queens into sudden admiration of him. And the best is yet to come.

Bay Area Guy said...

Snake Plissken to the courtesy phone....

"I don't give a fuck about your war, or your president."

-----

Achilles is the Snake Plissken of the blog!

(That's a compliment, Cowboy!)

Ken B said...

Yale says fuck off https://twitter.com/gregggonsalves/status/1243676210971971591

Mark said...

"You're tearing me apart! . . . You, you say one thing, he says another, and everybody changes back again!"

Jack Klompus said...

The Sidewinder is a great Lee Morgan album.

Jack Klompus said...

""You're tearing me apart! . . . You, you say one thing, he says another, and everybody changes back again!"

Rebel Without a Cause is a classic, but for my money the best Nicholas Ray film is the bizarro Western Johnny Guitar. The anti-chemistry between Joan Crawford and Mercedes McCambridge is delicious especially considering how much they despised each other off-set.

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

Blogger Ryan said...
Pianist on Git-Go Blues is Wynton Kelly. Same pianist that playedon Miles' track Freddy Freeloader (from the greatest jazz album of all time), and he plays that amazing blues solo at about 45 seconds in.


I also really like Wynton Kelly's piano playing and agree with your assessment of Kind of Blue. It has endured remarkably well. I still hear new music with echoes of that album.

narciso said...

<a href="https://twitter.com/ChuckRossDC/status/1243983141213216769?s=20'> rizzotto tray Maggie to the rescue </a>

narciso said...

oh and Hamilton 68, is going to be policing 'doubleunplusgood' sites for your own good,

Kathryn51 said...

That Fox poll:

Democrats: 49

GOP: 40%

Other/Ind: 11

I have seen any poll of "registered voters" that is 49% Democrat (or 40% GOP, for that matter).

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

Pretty sure Mark was quoting Kylie the Mole (?) from The Fantastic Mr. Fox.

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

Oops he’s a Possum!

narciso said...

on a more optimistic note

Focko Smitherman said...

Lee Morgan, "I Remember Clifford." And what the hell, Clifford Brown and Max Roach, "Joy Spring."

"Even God hates jazz."--Mayor Quimby

Jack Klompus said...

I kind of like when Coltrane went nuts and started doing free jazz stuff like Om and Infinity which was more of an Alice Coltrane project with her on the harp.

narciso said...

mind arson is damaging

tim in vermont said...

"Picture ARM as an automaton that is completely covered in buttons, and the DNC and the ChiComs... “

He’s really doing a bang up job as a get out the vote guy for Trump.

narayanan said...

I have heard "from get go" since I arrived in Alabama late 1970's.

it may even be in Louis L'Amour westerns.

Francisco D said...

Ken B said: Does anyone take any poll today see? Trump will either be FDR or he will be Hoover, and we won’t know which for some time. But this election will be about his handling of the crisis.

Not quite.

It will be about how the media portray his handling of the crisis.

tim in vermont said...

I feel like “From the get go" is not something I said as a kid but who can say now? It seems pretty normal to me.

Gk1 said...

I can remember reading many a tendentious Molly Ivin anti Reagan/Bush screed circa 1988-91 with "get go" sprinkled in. It was current as far as 90's liberals jargon. Perhaps that is where Joe's mind is at. Which is interesting as Malarkey goes back to when people listen to Charlie McCarthy hour on "The Radio"

walter said...

Ha! Corona virus stuff off topic, prompting jazz discussion ;)
Giddyup!

Johnathan Birks said...

Love me some Lee Morgan on a Saturday afternoon.
It's only a matter of time before Biden calls law enforcement officers "po-po".

cf said...

Thank you, Althouse, for providing such musical relief in the guise of the 26th "Biden" label my skimming had offered up until then.

Linked onto the last music, tho, oh, so been letting youtube keep on tracking from their, such a boogie cool.

all things made new!

Jack Klompus said...

In a Silent Way by Miles Davis is great "work at home" music.

Darkisland said...

Seems to me that many people have been doxxed, attacked, harrassed and physically assaulted for expressing even mildly favorable opinions about pdjt.

At this point one would have to be nuts to tell a pollster that they favor pdjt.

Sure polls are supposed to be anonymous. But why take a chance.

I suspect that a lot of people, confronted by a pollster see no upside to answering trump and some, perhaps minimal, downside. Easiest to just say "yeah, I'm for Biden."

I think looking at primary turnout may give a better picture. PDJT is unopposed and got huge turnouts.

I don't put much stock in presidential polling at this point. The progressives have posed in that soup so often only someone like arm would drink it now.

John Henry

Gospace said...

I’ve always heard it as git-go.

While not 100% certain, I do believe you’ll hear it used in old westerns. Along with “Git along little dogie.” I may have heard that one in boot camp, but never anywhere else but westerns.

Lurker21 said...

According to google engrams, "get-go" first appears in their corpus of American works around 1947. It moves upward a bit around 1967, but is still very rare. It takes off after 1987. In British English, the work appeared in print around 1900, then disappeared until about the 1960s and took off after about 1987.

"From the get-go" is said to have originated in Black English, appearing in print in the mid-Sixties in works by Toni Cade Bambara and Piri Thomas. It appears in African-American newspapers in the early Sixties. That fits with the engram for "from the get-go." Just what "get-go" by itself was doing in England sixty years before remains a mystery.

So "from the get-go" is a word from the long Biden era of our history. Maybe he learned it from Corn Pop.

BUMBLE BEE said...

He's a fuckin genius... Radio TV Dinner NatLampCo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BiAy-B6J22A

Mark said...

I've like Morwenna from the get-go.

Mark said...

Acorn TV is free right now.

Finally I can see Series 9.

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

Jack Klompus said...
I kind of like when Coltrane went nuts and started doing free jazz stuff like Om and Infinity which was more of an Alice Coltrane project with her on the harp.

In a Silent Way by Miles Davis is great "work at home" music.


Took me a long time to warm up to 'In a Silent Way' (decades), because I have a strong prejudice against jazz-rock. Not sure why people thought this was a sell-out album, it is not a particularly accessible album even now.

narayanan said...

http://www.legalblog.in/2010/12/precedentiary-value-of-judgments-law.html

how acceptable is this view in USA jurisprudence?

My Q would be what facts have changed to re-qualify Joe Biden for AA endorsement and vote in November?

FullMoon said...

Aren't you curious as to why none of the health authorities want to test healthy people?

It would mess up the averages..

Anyway:
The source only purports to search for the earliest usage in writing. It's always presumed that the word entered speech some time earlier

Mel Gibson movie about origination of Oxford dictionary claims authors solicited words and phrases from all classes of population in attempt to be as complete as possible..

FullMoon said...

When all is said and done, we can look back at Drudge report as a calming influence among the excitable media. Rainbows and Unicorns 24/7

Mark said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Yancey Ward said...

In Derbyshire, England, Big Brother is watching you!

I like how they keep using the friendly phrase, "We are all in this together."

Yancey Ward said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Mark said...

Strange times. O.03 percent of Arlington has tested positive -- about the same percentage as the nation overall.

And we are all snug as a bug in our homes as if we had ten feet of snow out there.

Yancey Ward said...

Grant Sanderson takes you through how various models for epidemic work at their most basic level. It worth 20 minutes of your time.

Mark said...

Across all of Virginia, there are 739 cases, with 99 hospitalizations and 17 deaths out of 9,166 people tested.

The rate of Virginia hospitalization -- 13 percent -- is high compared to the worldometers numbers showing that 95 percent of cases are mild. But at this stage, they might be overly cautious. Of the 75 in Arlington -- home of the Pentagon and thus a lot of military that are posted around the world, in addition to the international types -- I've heard that seven have been hospitalized.

Yancey Ward said...

It is fascinating to watch the pushback on Trump's trial balloon about quarantining New York.

Trump literally can make the left take any position he wants by advocating for the opposite.

Mark said...

Trump: I'm hopeful we can relax a bit by Easter.

Left: You hateful monster! We need to lock down for months!!

Trump: I'm thinking about cordoning off and quarantining the NYC tri-state area for a couple of weeks.

Left: You hateful monster! We need to open things up as soon as we can!!

Yancey Ward said...

Does anyone have any clue why California's backlog on COVID testing keeps growing? I Googled, and while there are stories from today, not a single one of them has any answers, nor does it look like the reporters are even asking the various politicians about what is going wrong.

Mark said...

Why the backlog?

Possibly because when you are preoccupied with others and constantly blaming them, you tend not to do the things that are your own responsibility to do.

Narr said...

Two distant social encounters today: old friend says he made the mistake of letting his opinion known on FB, and has been unfriended by a lot of people. Now he's good guy but a yellow dog Dem so I wait for more explanation, and he says "I expect the right wing assholes to unfriend me, but I thought these other people were on the same side as me!"

Later, my brother was bitching about Trump (of course) and how the latest epicenter (and nearest to our fannies) was New Orleans, which had a million for Mardi Gras, and of course NYC looks screwed. I said, yeah, that city health department call for everyone to get out and enjoy Chinese New Year wasn't maybe the best call.

He looked blank, as if I'd started speaking Urdu, and given the steady diet of cable-bilge he consumes, I shouldn't have been surprised.

Cali test backlog? Trump!

Narr
Pay attention, class

gpm said...

Started out in life as a little white boy on the South(west) Side of Chicago. Can't swear to it, but "get go," particularly "from the get go," seems like language I've been familiar with my entire life.

--gpm

FullMoon said...

Story yesterday young athletic man dies, today 95 year old lady survives and goes home.

Swiss woman, 95, back home after surviving coronavirus

DanTheMan said...

>>Trump ’s new election slogan: Think Big: - first he bankrupted his father’s company, and then a nation.

Spending is controlled by Congress. I think you know that.

JPS said...

FullMoon,

That is a great story, thank you. I admire the lady's attitude. My grandmother passed away late last year at 95, and had much the same spirit, both before and while she was ill. Here's hoping Mme. Fatton gets to see her grandkids and great-grandkids in person before too long.

Will Cate said...

Johnny Cash, some time in the 1950s, used the expression "get goin'" on his Sun Records' single "Get Rhythm" ... I used to think he was saying "get gone" until I read the lyrics.

"Get goin'" at least down here in the south has always be synonymous with beginning something, a journey, a job, a process \