Morning in Minnesota

Currently Biden is up by about 230,000 votes.  Apparently there were 1.8 million early votes; compare that to 2.6 million votes total in 2016.

Ilhan Omar won in her district, but with only about 65% of the vote this time, compared to 78% in 2018.

Our precinct was busy at the beginning of the day, but by the time I got there, there was no line and I had my pick of the voting booths.

Minneapolis had a few arrests, but no large groups of protestors as far as I know. 

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Some numbers on Minnesota hospital capacity finally appear:  908 COVID cases in hospitals; 203 of those in ICUs, and they are beginning to sound alarms about a lack of ICU staff.  If you remember in the spring, the state scrambled to get ICU capacity up to well over 2,000 beds.  The lack of staffing seems to be related to quarantines.  Many nurses are being asked to return to work before their 14 days are up.  Only about a third of those quarantined because of heavy exposure became sick.

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A quote I found interesting, about peasant life in 16th century Russia around the time of Ivan the Terrible:

In order to make their estates profitable and to fulfill their obligations to Moscow, both the boyars and the service gentry needed a constant supply of peasant labor.  This was assured only when the peasants were immobilized, attached firmly to the land.  The traditional means of binding them in this way was through debt; a landlord would advance money to a peasant and the peasant would remain on the land until his debt had been paid.  Legally, peasants could pay their debts after the fall harvest and move, taking service with another landlord who offered better terms or better land.  But in fact, peasants almost never earned enough to do that; most found themselves barely able to meet the interest payments on their debts, and they thus remained, year after year, in a condition little different from bondage.  -- Robert Wallace, Rise of Russia