Ah. I am thinking he may not have that long left

Vice President Jefferies

It doesn’t work that way. First of all, Mike Johnson is the Speaker, and is next in line for the Presidency after the VP, not Jeffries. But that entire list is strictly to see who would be President if the office were suddenly vacant. The House Speaker would only take over if there is a Presidential vacancy while the office of VP is also vacant.

Should Harris becomes President due to Biden leaving office early, the office of VP would become vacant and remain so until President Harris picks a replacement, and that replacement is ratified by both houses of Congress. Sadly, in today’s political climate that is not a guarantee.

Farmer: oh no, that sounds baaaad

See inside what? Did you link to anything?

As I see it, key deadlines are:

• The party conventions, where each parties nominee will be formalized. (But recall that the actual Democratic Nomination will be done before the convention, to meet some State deadlines).

• The election itself, where voters choose which slate of electors cast EC votes.

• The electoral college election that really matters.

• The counting of the EC Votes

• the inauguration

Once the nominations are formalized, they probably can’t be undone, since there are State deadlines involved.

But always remember that people are not voting for the candidates themselves, but for a slate of electors. And while the expectation is for these electors to vote for the ticket they were pledged to, if one candidate is subject to God’s Almighty Recall Vote, they appear to have the discretion to file votes differently.

Once the EC votes are cast, though, there would probably be no choice but to accept them. (Congress recently revamped the counting process to eliminate some of the shenanigans that happened last time). I expect that if either one croaks after that, they would probably just inaugurate the VP on the ticket directly.

(Edited to add: states may be able to change EC votes after the December EC election. That date is based on a “safe harbor” deadline which makes EC votes harder to challenge. So, if the winning candidate bites it on Christmas Day there’s probably a way for State Legislatures to certify new EC votes before Congress counts them Jan 6, but we should expect a challenge to that.)

(It would suck if Trump won, and Biden croaked on Jan 19th. We might have our first female President, for one day.)

As I understand it, it’s due to advances in the technology that supports biology and paleontology. When all scientists had to go on were fossils, the bone structure of dinosaurs more closely resembled giant lizards, so thats the conclusion they came to. But recent techniques, including genetic analysis on currently existing species, clearly shows the link between birds and dinosaurs. (And, in fact, alligators are more closely related to birds than they are to lizards.)

I found this article which seems to explain it well:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-dinosaurs-shrank-and-became-birds/

My guess is that if they had got a local Soul Food place to cater a whole spread, and the fried chicken and watermelon was part of the rest of the stuff you just mentioned, it would have gone over better. (I bet Charlotte has a bunch of places that would have done that for them). Maybe they could even have done some research and provided the context I am just learning now, in this thread.

But I think this was planned by committee, and that committee planned it all in a half hour so they could break for lunch earlier. So they got a bunch of buckets of chicken (I hope they weren’t from KFC), and someone went to Publix and bought a bunch of watermelon to cut up, and they called it all good. And that committee had nobody on it that pointed out how bad this would look without better planning. (In other words, no black folks…)

It’s technically not a guarantee, it is certainly possible for the entire market to take a dump at once. Over the long term – decades – it has been profitable to invest in the US stock market even counting these downturns. Like they say in all the stock prospectuses, though, past performance is not a guarantee of future results.

Still, I’ll take my chances with the market. At least if it goes to zero, I’ll have a lot of company at the homeless shelter.

Any investment can be seen as a “bet”, the difference comes from the conditions out of which the return comes. Does it come out of a business’s operations, or a piece of some other source of income? Then even a high-risk investment is still an investment. Even an investment in an asset which is expected to appreciate in the future is still an investment, as long as that appreciation is based on something tangible. Walt Disney bought up a lot of useless real estate in the Florida Swamp, but had a plan as to how to make the investment pay off.

A gamble will have nothing concrete backing it, it will just be down to chance. Like betting on Red at Roulette. Or going to FanDuel and betting that Pete Alonso will hit a home run in tonight’s game. Those odds are made by professional bookmakers to make the chances as close to 50/50 (minus the sports book’s vig) as they can.

Basically, a gamble is up to random chance, an investment can be backed by a business case. But there are aspects of risk to both.

A monastery in the English countryside had fallen on hard times, and the monks decided to open a fish-and-chips restaurant. The establishment soon became very popular, attracting people from all over.

One city fellow, thinking himself clever, asked one of the brothers standing nearby, “I suppose you’re the 'fish friar?’”

“No,” answered the brother, straight-faced. “I’m the ‘chip monk.’”

He’s mostly armless

All your base are belong to us

It’s already damaged with all of that Nazi shit, you would be fixing it by removing it all.

I knew I could never be a lawyer, because I would never pass a bar (without going in).

Arby’s rations

That’s a good old pun, I have a tear in my eye,

And I’m laughing so hard I might die

I’m laughing so hard I might die

I just got an electric fan. It blows. I love it.

I want to follow up that excellent pun, but I can’t come up with Jack.

Use what you want to. Let others use what they want to. Don’t overthink it.

Some people are thrilled with the fact that they can make their little online avatar closer to their reality, others don’t give a damn, because they don’t want to define themselves by their virtual presence. At the end of the day, though, they’re just pixels. What you say and how you treat people is much more important than whatever little +1 icon gets attached.

I’m fully remote, with no clock to punch, but with co-workers all over the world. I try to focus most of my hours between 9 and 5, but don’t sweat it too much because a few times a month I need to be on a call at 5 in the morning or 10 at night.

There is simply no good time to schedule meetings with someone 12 hours away.

We do amend the Constitution from time to time, but it takes a 2/3 vote in both houses of Congress, plus ratification by 3/4 of states. so it’s quite a high bar.