Circumstances have me working at home this week, and I’d forgotten how much I enjoy it, at least in summer. Up early, swim, shower, put on yoga pants and a tank top and DON’T TAKE THEM OFF ALL DAMN DAY. I have to say that I equally enjoy those days when I get up, shower, put on makeup and head off downtown like a grownup, but in summer, days like this are sweet. You feel like you’re getting away with something. And the fact some actual yoga was involved is only the icing.
And now I’m sitting here catching up on the news and whoa! Eric Cantor loses his primary? This is like the end of “Fatal Attraction” where Glenn Close, having been drowned in the bathtub by Michael Douglas, suddenly rises out of the water with all her strengths and powers intact. The tea party lives.
Also, there was another school shooting Tuesday. A friend of mine is traveling in France for a month. I sent him a link to ShootingTracker.com, just so he can keep up with all that’s been going on in his absence.
It’s a beautiful day that others will remember as the worst of their lives. Isn’t that the way it always works out? I think the message is, if it’s a good one for you, enjoy it.
Because I have little else in my mind, let’s keep it light. When did Tom & Lorenzo stop calling Prince William’s wife Cathy Cambridge? Because I’m not digging Cathering, Duchess of Cambridge all that much. Even though I love her outfit. If I were a size-0 princess, this is exactly the sort of thing I’d wear. Keep it simple, keep it classic.
The modern dog leash is patented. I had no idea. Wendy and I use one ourselves; it’s really the only way to walk a terrier.
And with that, I wish you another perfect summer day. (Supposed to rain here.)
Sherri said on June 11, 2014 at 2:46 am
We were talking about the Common Core backlash here the other day; here’s a WaPo article about how the Common Core got adopted so fast in the first place (hint – $233 million of Gates Foundation money strategically thrown around):
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-bill-gates-pulled-off-the-swift-common-core-revolution/2014/06/07/a830e32e-ec34-11e3-9f5c-9075d5508f0a_story.html?hpid=z1
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Dexter said on June 11, 2014 at 2:50 am
Our JRT is too old to run off and only escaped once anyway and was a easy retrieval. Since March, 2011 when my daughter presented me with Pogo the Black Lab, she has seventeen escapes on her record. I began experimenting with leash combinations and I have settled on a Kong brand harness, a collar, and a chain around her body, secured with multiple snap-link rings. Six weeks she backed out of everything and had a romp for 90 minutes and a man grabbed her for me before she got it by a car, so I incorporated another chain to the mix, but I abandoned that, and now I concentrate 100% and just never let her back up away from me. I also wear a leather belt around my breastplate area and use another snap ring to secure the leash strap. So far so good.
I started to cut the grass with the trusty Toro Personal Pace Mower but blissful rain let loose giving me a reprieve.
I admit to being jealous of oldest daughter Lori as she continues to tear up the town way down yonder in New Orleans.
They’re eating well, hitting the biker bars they love so well, and even took a bayou cruise.
Now I want a beignet, dammittall to hell!
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Dexter said on June 11, 2014 at 2:53 am
http://classroom.kleinisd.net/users/0783/images/beignets_cafemonde.jpg
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beb said on June 11, 2014 at 8:22 am
Meanwhile Lindsay Graham won his primary so that sexually ambiguoug douche-bag will be back in Congress. I’m still waiting to see what happens to the turtle from KY – Mitch McConnell – does in his primary. While it would be nice to see the Republican establishment kicked out of office, their replacements – alas- will only be much worse.
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Dave said on June 11, 2014 at 8:35 am
McConnell already won handily, Beb.
http://tinyurl.com/p73slka
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brian stouder said on June 11, 2014 at 8:52 am
At the end of the last thread, Jolene has a link to a very good (and succinct) reaction to the Cantor collapse, by Ezra Klein.
It is interesting that in Cantor’s last general election, he got 230,000 votes; while last night the primary race was determined with about 1/8 that amount.
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Deborah said on June 11, 2014 at 9:49 am
That shooting tracker link is scary. I had no idea there were that many. This needs more play. People need to be more aware that mass shootings are not rare.
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Jolene said on June 11, 2014 at 9:56 am
The map at the link below was posted yesterday and has since been popping up in lots of places.
http://www.vox.com/2014/6/10/5797306/map-school-shooting-sandy-hook
But I agree that the shootings site is important. In terms of policy, a shooting is as important as a killing. It’s the shootings that we need to prevent.
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Joe Kobiela said on June 11, 2014 at 10:36 am
Poor Bill and Hillary, came out of the White House flat broke, not a dime to their name, actually in debt. Now really do any of us here really believe that? Flat broke not a dime? What happened to the 8 million book advance?
Really? Broke? And people want her to handle the economy of this country?
Pilot Joe
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Suzanne said on June 11, 2014 at 10:52 am
That Ezra Klein quote is chilling in light of the book I’m currently reading (Monuments Men). Hitler, & I’d guess just about every other despot in history, thrives for a time exactly what Klein mentions–surrounding themselves with those who only tell them what they want to hear. It rarely ends well when reality sinks in, but it also doesn’t end well for everybody caught in the fallout. Sad.
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Sue said on June 11, 2014 at 10:52 am
Nancy, that’s a TLO Whiteboard. Whiteboards do not include any comment from Tom and Lorenzo. Don’t worry, I’m sure Cathy Cambridge and Grandma Betty will still be around.
Brian, I particularly liked Ezra’s last sentence: “John Boehner must be having an emotionally complicated evening.”.
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Dorothy said on June 11, 2014 at 11:19 am
If you read the whole article and not just the headline, Joe, you’ll see that the Clintons had huge legal bills that they had to pay. That was the main reason they were “broke.” As soon as Mr. Clinton was out of office, his speaking fees helped them tremendously. This is the way many ex-Presidents are able to make money after they are no longer President.
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alex said on June 11, 2014 at 11:25 am
Joe at 9–
I don’t know if you remember, but Bill Clinton settled the Paula Jones lawsuit for millions of dollars and he spent quite a bit defending himself against all of the other nuisance lawsuits brought by the Republicans — Whitewater, etc. I think it’s quite plausible that they were broke at the time.
As for Hillary handling the economy, my only concern is that the Republicans will continue to deliberately sabotage and destroy the economy to make her look bad just like they have done during Obama’s two terms.
Brian, regarding primaries versus general elections, I suspect this is just like the Matt Kelty vs. Nelson Peters mayoral primary a couple of years ago. The establishment GOP, overconfident, stayed home while the nutter’s energized following turned out in full force. The polling very well may have shown Cantor with a decisive lead, and may in turn have made voters complacent. But, hey, it’s all good. I’m glad to see that creep get his comeuppance and his seat will probably turn blue this fall.
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Jolene said on June 11, 2014 at 11:35 am
Right, Dorothy. They owed $12 million in legal fees, largely the result of having to defend themselves against charges and lawsuits launched by the right wing. Given taxes, they’d have had to earn twice that to repay it.
They certainly didn’t have lots of money before entering the WH. The current governor of Arkansas only makes 87K, 49th among US governors. I imagine Clinton’s salary was similarly low. Hillary worked, but I don’t think she made bundles.
Clinton made more as president, of course, but only 200k, nowhere enough to pay those legal bills.*
That said, Hillary could have been more gracious in describing their circumstances. She’ll likely have a better answer next time she’s asked.
*i learned in looking up the presidential salary is now 400K. Has been the same since 2001.
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Jolene said on June 11, 2014 at 12:08 pm
WaPo has a new article re Bowe Bergdahl based on written materials that he sent home and interviews with people who knew him in Idaho. Made me really sad to read it. Seems clear that he was a psychologically marginal creature before he entered the Army and that he probably should not have been allowed to enlist.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/bergdahls-writings-reveal-a-fragile-young-man/2014/06/11/fb9349fe-f165-11e3-bf76-447a5df6411f_story.html
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Jeff Borden said on June 11, 2014 at 12:43 pm
While we await more hearings on Bowe Bergdahl, Benghazi and whatever else the morons in the national Republican Party are fascinated with at the moment, the nation that George W. Bush invaded for no damned reason is descending into the kind of chaos that any sentient human being with even a passing knowledge of the Middle East predicted.
Elements of al Queda now control Mosul and the surrounding province. The Iraqi troops we spent so much blood, time and money trying to train threw down their weapons and fled. The insurgents captured enormous amounts of American ordnance, which they will undoubtedly put to deadly use. The government teeters amid the exact kind of religious discrimination, corruption and incompetence that opponents of the Iraq invasion predicted.
And yet we fixate on fucking Benghazi while the incompetent bastards who lied us into a bloody, brutal and expensive war continue to bloviate in polite company. No investigations of the lies they told. . .the intelligence they fudged. . .the political games they played in the run-in to this disastrous foreign policy error. . .nada.
In a sane nation, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Powell, Wolfowitz, et.al. would be, at the very least, shunned and ignored, if not tried and jailed. Not exceptional America! Here, we forgive W. because he’s seems like a nice enough guy. . .we give Powell a pass because he, at least, recanted his support. . .Cheney gets regular guest slots on talking heads shows.
It makes me want to scream.
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Jolene said on June 11, 2014 at 12:48 pm
Amen, Jeff, amen.
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Joe Kobiela said on June 11, 2014 at 1:39 pm
But wait didn’t Hillary make a bundle in cattle futures? She was called the smartest woman in the world at the time. They had to pay legal fees? Bill settled for Millions with Paula Jones? You mean he did something wrong? Huh?
Alex let me ask you this. If Mr Obama came to you in 2 years looking for a job managing YOUR money, or running your business, would you give him one?
I’ll hang up and wait for a answer.
Cheers
Pilot Joe
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jcburns said on June 11, 2014 at 1:54 pm
I’d let President Obama teach me Constitutional law, serve as a judge, Supreme Court justice, or be my lawyer…after all, that’s what his training is. I probably wouldn’t let him take out my appendix or manage my mutual funds. But I’d let Tim Geithner do that. The mutual funds part, that is. Your point, Joe?
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brian stouder said on June 11, 2014 at 1:58 pm
Joe – every president we’ve had would make a very fine sales person; it’s what they do.
If I was going to write an essay about politics, at the center of it would be Ronald Wilson Reagan, who I used to love (and for whom I voted four times, counting primaries- which is four MORE times that Oxy-Rush ever voted for RWR!)
and who now looks to me like the most criminal president of the 20th century.
By way of saying – any beef you think you have with BHO can be matched or surpassed with legitimate beefs about anyone else you care to point to.
I suppose HRC will get even rougher treatment than BHO has gotten, since sexism is (apparently) less gauche than racism
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alex said on June 11, 2014 at 2:29 pm
Joe–
Settling in a lawsuit doesn’t mean you did anything wrong and it’s not an admission of guilt. You’ll find this out soon enough if you’re ever in a minor fender bender and the other person calls Kenn Nunn or Blackburn & Green and sues you claiming they can’t work anymore and want to go on disability. Happens all the time. Your auto insurance will probably pay them a couple grand to shut up and go away and then jack your rates to make up for it.
Regarding Paula Jones, it’s impossible to know what happened there or if anything happened at all because she was selling her story to sleazebags and no two versions of it were the same.
Mr. Obama wouldn’t be coming to me looking for a job. You must have a low opinion of him like he’s supposed to be a shoe-shine boy or something. He’ll have his pick of important jobs when he leaves office and whomever is fortunate enough to nab him will be very pleased, I’m sure.
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Sherri said on June 11, 2014 at 2:34 pm
Joe, had Republicans held the Presidency and both houses of Congress, do you really believe the economy would be better? What specifically would Republicans have done to make it better?
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brian stouder said on June 11, 2014 at 2:47 pm
Sherri – the unfolding Common Core story, and then relentless assaults against our public school system (financed by shameless elitists like Gates) is something I read about (or at least skim) every day, from Diane Ravitch.
One area that I’ll join Joe in hurling invective at President Obama, et al, is his education policies (Race to the Top, etc)
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Sherri said on June 11, 2014 at 2:59 pm
Brian, one reason I’m for tax reform is to save us from well meaning technocrats like Gates who think they have the solutions to our problems and so much money that they drown out any other solutions.
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brian stouder said on June 11, 2014 at 3:16 pm
Sherri – I could not possibly agree with you more!
‘Course, nowadays money = speech.
Maybe someday we can become more efficient, and they can skip past “one person, one vote” to “one dollar = one vote” – and to hell with what the hoi polloi (like you and I) say
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Sherri said on June 11, 2014 at 3:16 pm
Education reformers are happy that a judge has struck down teacher tenure in California, saying it’s too hard to fire bad teachers. Maybe it is, but reformers always seem fixated on firing teachers, without ever answering where the teachers to replace them are going to come from. Teach For America kiddies doing their Peace Corps imitation for a couple of years before they head off to the rest of their lives isn’t the answer.
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Jeff Borden said on June 11, 2014 at 3:27 pm
I’ll be damned if I’ll listen to a Republican yapping about the economy after the presidencies of St. Ronald and Bush the Lesser. They ran us into the ground. We were lucky enough to enjoy the tech boom, which bailed us out of Reagan’s profligacy, but that was a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence. We will get no such relief from the oceans of debt created by Bush. Two wars. . .a massive Medicaid expansion. . .huge tax cuts without offsetting revenue increases or serious cuts have led us to this place. Poor Obama was the guy with the bucket and the mop who had to come in and clean up all the shit the wee man from Crawford left lying around and all he’s gotten for preventing another depression is grief.
I’ll also take time to remind you that the desiccated sac of pus that is Dick Cheney bragged that Reagan had proven “deficits don’t matter.” Given a choice between Republican jackasses concerned only with the fortunes of their corporate masters or the Democrats, who at least spend money that benefits those outside K Street and the defense industry, I’ll go with the Dems.
Republicans have zero –ZERO– credibility on our economy.
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brian stouder said on June 11, 2014 at 3:35 pm
Sherri – we used to remark how lucky we were that our daughter or son got this teacher or that one.
After a couple years of luckily getting one fine teacher after the next, it finally occurred to us that it wasn’t really luck at all, but that a lot of very dedicated professionals are teachers at our schools.
But some folks are so phobic about any sort of union, that they’re reflexively anti-professional teachers.
Here in Fort Wayne, our whack City Council is working to disband all public employee unions….except police and fire!!
Huh…why would that be? Hmmmm….
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Joe Kobiela said on June 11, 2014 at 4:27 pm
It’s amazing 6 years later it Bushes fault is still the Mantra.
Behngazi, fast and furious, irs, va, Obama care debacle, house hold income down, I still hear blame Bush, we didn’t know, I’ll get to the bottom of this, some one will be held responsible, yada, yada, yada, take a good honest look people this president made you promises he could in no way keep, including ” you can keep your doctor, PERIOD” to get himself elected, and yes the republicans keep shooting them self in the foot on trying to find some one decent to run, I figure most the republicans that are any good are working for a living and don’t have time or want the media slurs that go with being a republican.
Oh well we will see
In the mean time it’s a good discussion and hopefully made you think about a few things, I’m heading to Tulsa at 8pm to haul some freight, should be a nice night to fly.
Pilot Joe
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brian stouder said on June 11, 2014 at 4:36 pm
Joe – just for the record, it made sense to me when RWR ran against Jimmy Carter and defeated him. It even made some sense when he ran for re-election, again against Carter (what with Mondale as his opponent).
But it used to puzzle me when GHWB ran against Carter and the Carter economy and the Carter Malaise. I recall American Spectator ran cover after cover with caricatures of Jimmy Carter, a dozen years after he left office.
Listen even casually, and you can STILL hear anti-Carter slurs at election time.
By way of saying – the last president you and I both voted for precipitated the largest economic (not to mention military) debacles of my lifetime….so I figure we’re good for another few cycles of public tomato-throwing at him.
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Jolene said on June 11, 2014 at 4:49 pm
It just happens, Joe, that the things GWB screwed up have long-term, pervasive ill effects. Compared to the war in Iraq and its sequelae (debt, death and injury of Americans and Iraqis, long-term care of injured veterans, political disruption of the Middle East resulting in increases in terrorism, damage to the reputation of the US throughout the world) the technological glitches of healthcare.gov and other small-time issues you mention are, well, small-time issues.
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alex said on June 11, 2014 at 4:52 pm
In the mean time it’s a good discussion and hopefully made you think about a few things
It sure did, Joe. It made me think once again about how talking to people who watch Fox News is like talking to people who live on Mars and have never seen Earth before.
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Judybusy said on June 11, 2014 at 5:19 pm
Completely off the topic (but in the original post), but I love Cathy’s dress, and would wear it in a heartbeat! It’s a cut that’s usually flattering for me, and I’ve been thinking a lot lately about white. Not that I can afford that dress, or much sartorally right now, given the home-related monetary hemorrhages we’re having. (Good stuff–the remodel, but still bleeding gobs of cash.)
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Jeff Borden said on June 11, 2014 at 5:46 pm
I’m in Jolene’s camp. It does take a helluva long time to clean up a multi-trillion-dollar mess. My biggest beef with Obama is his damned gentlemanliness. He should have appointed special prosecutors to probe not only how and why we were lied into a war with Iraq, but all the other attendant atrocities from the awarding of billion-dollar-no bid contracts to friends of the administration to the horrific violence perpetrated by Blackwater and others like it. Instead, he pulled a Gerald Ford and decided to focus on the future. Naturally, conservatives reacted by attacking him for everything.
Whenever I hear someone from the right yelling about Benghazi, I’m struck dumb by their silence on the 4,000-plus dead thanks to a bogus, ginned up war. Not to mention, of course, the 60 embassy and consulate staffers killed in the eight years when Bush the Lesser was in office.
Joe, I still hate Richard Nixon for what he did to this country and that was 40-plus years ago. His crimes still reverberate, too. Surely you’ve seen new evidence that Tricky Dick conspired to scuttle the Paris peace talks in 1968 by promising our puppets in Saigon they’d get better terms under a Nixon administration. More than 22,000 additional American soldiers died as he escalated a war he helped prolong.
Bush is harder to hate, per se, because he so clearly seems an empty vessel easily manipulated by his betters, but I’ll manage.
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Joe Kobiela said on June 11, 2014 at 6:05 pm
Alex,
I feel the same way about people that watch cnn, and msnbc.
Jeff B your right he should have been tougher, but since he has no experience in running anything more that a ice cream stand he wouldn’t know how to handle anything like this. And Brian they still talk about Carter because even though he was a nice guy, he was a terrible president, high unemployment, high inflation, high intrest, rates.
Pilot Joe
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Jeff Borden said on June 11, 2014 at 6:12 pm
I don’t think it was inexperience, Joe. I think Obama bought into his own hype that he could be a transformational political figure and bring red and blue together.
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alex said on June 11, 2014 at 6:14 pm
Joe, I don’t watch either of those.
As for Carter, he inherited the mess of runaway inflation, high interest rates and high unemployment that took off during the Nixon/Ford years. To say that these things were his fault is ridiculous. To fault him for being unable to fix them is also ridiculous. Interest rates went even higher under Reagan during his first several years. Remember when mortgages were in the neighborhood of 18-20 percent? I don’t consider that Reagan’s fault just because he happened to be president.
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