One of my census “cases” last night was here:
I’m not sure which of those two houses was the one I was supposed to visit. I looked at the app for a choice. Demolished didn’t quite work, so I chose uninhabitable. And I got no closer than this, because surely something was living back there. Quite a lot, actually. I was wearing sandals and didn’t want to encounter whatever critter or critters that might be. Or the poison ivy.
Also had a few vacant lots. You had to look for the driveway cut across the park strip to tell there had been a house there, once upon a time. And that tells you what the last 10 years did to Detroit.
Another exciting moment: I’m standing on the porch of a seen-better-days house, about to tell the app that I can’t determine whether or not it’s occupied — early lesson: never assume a rundown house in Detroit isn’t occupied without some compelling evidence — when I look up and see a pit bull sitting in the driveway, looking at me.
I don’t like pit bulls. I know there are some very nice ones, it’s all bad owners, and I’ve known a few sweet ones, but call me a breedist. I just don’t trust them. This one wasn’t threatening at all, and wasn’t 100 percent pit bull, but enough that you could tell. No collar. Looked healthy, and the neighborhood wasn’t a feral-dogs kind of place, but still. If this was its house, I was on its porch. We looked at each other for a long moment until I remembered you’re supposed to avert your eyes. I had a clipboard I could potentially use as a weapon. My flimsy shoulder bag, filled with paper, might be a shield, if an attack was only half-hearted. I looked back at the dog. “Who’s a good dog?” I asked in the voice I use on Wendy. No response. I opted for a slow sideways sidle off the porch and down the front walk. The dog watched me go, stood up and stretched, then turned around and headed for the back yard.
Potential unsecured dog, I thumb-typed into the app.
And that was my census adventure Thursday night. I should add that the people I encounter are mostly very kind and sweet. Most of my cases were in Detroit, and I had pleasant chats with more than a few Detroiters. House for house, I’ve seen far more hostility in Grosse Pointe and Harper Woods. But cheerful souls there, too. House by house, we count ’em up.
And no, I didn’t watch Trump’s speech last night. I don’t have 70 minutes of my life to give to that asshole, and Twitter was doing most of the heavy lifting. The scene at the White House was as horrifying as any movie monster. But Jim Gaffigan, the comedian, had a spectacular night. His tweets aren’t threaded, but they’re easy to find on his account. This was my favorite:
Fuck Lou Holtz. Biden is Catholic in name only? Compared to who? How many abortions did trump pay for? How many women has he raped? How many times did pull the shit he did in Ukraine. Wake up. He's a crook and a con man.
— Jim Gaffigan (@JimGaffigan) August 28, 2020
Also this one:
By the way you can't be against Cancel Culture and tell people to stay out of politics. You know that time you did a job and didn't get paid? That's trump and you know it.
— Jim Gaffigan (@JimGaffigan) August 28, 2020
And this one was the coup de grace:
hey fuck you karen
— Jim Gaffigan (@JimGaffigan) August 28, 2020
I’m taking today off from census-ing, but will be back Monday (I hope) with more tales of the count. Unless I am attacked by a dog.
Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on August 28, 2020 at 9:29 am
Jim dropping the f-bomb? Next thing you know, I might . . . nahhhh.
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LAMary said on August 28, 2020 at 10:40 am
I couldn’t handle much of the RNC. I saw Tiffany. I saw a little bit of Donny Jr. I saw too much of Mike Pence. The bullshit force was strong in all of them. I missed the St. Louis couple and that’s probably for the best.
I would like to thank George W. Bush for not renewing the assault rifle ban. Without his decision to do that we might not have the Sandy Hook massacre of small children, or the cute couple referenced above, or young Kyle Rittenhouse.
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LAMary said on August 28, 2020 at 11:11 am
The clip of trump’s acceptance speech that NPR keeps playing is “I profoundly accept the nomination…” Am I alone in thinking that profoundly is a weird word in that sentence and that he probably misread “proudly?”
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Julie Robinson said on August 28, 2020 at 11:30 am
Good for Jim. I’m not on Twitter, but on Instagram he and family are involved in social service projects and raising money for them.
Mary, I think it’s his usual muddle of confusion with the English language and difficulty with reading aloud.
I couldn’t stand to watch or listen to any part of the convention. I knew what kind of crap they were going to sling, and it makes me too depressed. That’s not something I need.
On a happier note, we’re interviewing the first of two prospective contractors for our addition this afternoon via video. I’m slightly ticked that we haven’t gotten the actual proposal ahead of time, despite requesting it. The other guy hasn’t sent his either. Without that, I’m not sure what kind of discussion we can have.
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LAMary said on August 28, 2020 at 11:36 am
No doubt he’s terrible at reading or speaking. I wasted some mental energy trying to figure out what accepting something profoundly meant.
Especially coming from a verbal idiot like trump.
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Sherri said on August 28, 2020 at 12:00 pm
The RNC makes it abundantly clear that we already live in a dictatorship. That they could flout not only norms and traditions but also federal laws with impunity makes it clear. Maybe, we can end this in November, with an overwhelming turnout in favor of Dems all over the ticket. I’m more optimistic about getting the votes than about ending this.
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LAMary said on August 28, 2020 at 12:11 pm
Not only do the repubs flout laws, people just accept it. Like who cares if Pompeo does a political speech in Jerusalem? Who cares that the White House is used for the gop convention? I care a lot.
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Jeff Borden said on August 28, 2020 at 12:19 pm
I’ve experienced the RNC largely through reading transcripts, which are horrifying enough, though they lack the emphasis of Kimberly Guilfoyles insane screaming or the gooey smarm of Mike Dense polishing the knob of his boss.
What I learned from these transcripts is staggering:
Covid-19 has been defeated. (Uh, nope)
The economy is bouncing back higher (stocks are, but not much else)
America is not racist (Nikki Haley aka Nimrata Randhawa says so)
tRumpy has helped black Americans more than Abe (statistics say no)
China is the root of all evil (but our largest trading partner)
As Jim Gaffigan would say: Fuck tRump. Fuck Dense. Fuck Moscow Mitch. Fuck Jockstrap Gym Jordan. Fuck the whole fucking Republican Party.
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alex said on August 28, 2020 at 12:24 pm
On a brighter note, the Wharton School of Business is finally going to investigate who took Trump’s entrance exam for him, now that the whole world is hearing audio of his sister talking about it:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-secret-recordings-sat-penn/2020/08/27/ea7a6640-e892-11ea-a414-8422fa3e4116_story.html?hpid=hp_no-name_trumpwharton-7aa%3Ahomepage%2Fstory-ans
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Sherri said on August 28, 2020 at 1:13 pm
I think of things in terms of my COVID budget. I got my hair cut and colored on Wednesday (outdoor and masked), so maybe cut back on exposure in other ways this week – no having another couple over this weekend for an outdoor dinner, or no walks with someone outside my bubble. How many people were in the gym when I was there? Etc.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/28/opinion/coronavirus-schools-tradeoffs.html
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Dorothy said on August 28, 2020 at 1:33 pm
Happy birthday to Jeff (t.m.m.o). In honor of your birthday, I’m taking Nestle to the vet for her yearly check up and shots. It’ll probably cost around $250.
The only parts of the RNC I saw were clips via Twitter. I’ve been absorbed in a book much of the week (“Say Nothing” about the IRA in the 70’s) which gave me a perfectly legitimate excuse for not tuning in. Not that I needed an excuse. I knew seeing any of it live would just ruin my mood for days and days, so it was easy to skip all of it. I’m no fan of Michael Cohen, but he’s going to be interviewed by Rachel Maddow. I’m guessing it’s happening on Monday and not tonight because MSNBC is not running promos on the screen this afternoon. Here’s hoping Mr. Cohen drops some really juicy intel on the CovidPrez – what a great birthday gift that will be for me!
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susan said on August 28, 2020 at 2:00 pm
Who is Jim Gaffigan?
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Sherri said on August 28, 2020 at 2:02 pm
This made me laugh.
https://twitter.com/ChrissieEvert/status/1299328949101694977
BTW, I loved the ESPN documentary about Evert and Navratilova, Unmatched. I’ve always wanted a documentary about Pam Shriver, who was a really good tennis player overshadowed by those two.
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Dorothy said on August 28, 2020 at 2:37 pm
Gaffigan is an actor/com dian.
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Julie Robinson said on August 28, 2020 at 2:55 pm
Jim Gaffigan is known as a gentle comedian who doesn’t work blue and talks a lot about being Catholic. So the idea of him dropping the F bomb probably shocked Karen.
Just met with the first contractor and he pushed my BS meter into the red zone. He sent us the bid less than five minutes before the meeting and it was almost double the initial amount. When I asked about the difference he said material costs have gone up. His first bid was July 29. I think we were lowballed.
He said the cabinets were very high grade and I asked for the name of the manufacturer at which point he hem and hawed and said there were about 30 of them. I told him I just wanted to see what they looked like. When he said how much prices had increased at Home Depot I asked if that was where they bought their materials, and he said they have lower cost suppliers. He tried to change the floors from vinyl planking to laminate.
A bunch of crap like that. This is why I hate doing this kind of work.
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Scout said on August 28, 2020 at 3:21 pm
That’s a whole lotta red flags, right there, Julie. I would keep looking. When we do big remodel projects, we tell them we’ll choose & supply the materials and only take quotes for the labor. It’s more research and work, but that way you’re comparing apples to apples.
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Julie Robinson said on August 28, 2020 at 3:37 pm
Oh, and the construction time went from three month to six or seven, too. I’m trusting my instincts here. Plus the cost is now so high the condos my mom looked at are within range, and it would be a LOT more space. She’s not been thrilled with reducing down to one room.
Hope the next guy is better, but the proposal he was supposed to send was a three page contract, photographed at a distance with a cell phone. No price. Good thing we have plenty of time on our apartment leases.
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Stephanie Hawkins said on August 28, 2020 at 3:57 pm
Regular lurker here (hi, Nancy!), but had to comment on this post to say I don’t like pit bulls, either, and I always feel satisfied when someone else comes out and says it. My story: I was once at a friend’s house when her boyfriend’s pit bull, who had up until that day been a harmless family dog who curled up next to her on the couch when they watched TV, suddenly snapped and attacked her. Nothing out of the ordinary was happening in the moment; we were looking at Halloween costumes on the internet. And the next thing I knew, he’d grabbed her by the leg and was dragging her around the house. It was terrifying, went on for seven full minutes, and ended with a 911 call and the dog being tased. My friend’s leg required extensive surgery and rehab, and she was (rightly) traumatized. So yeah, I don’t trust pit bulls either. And I always say speak up in those “there are no bad breed” conversations, because what I saw was truly horrific. And that’s my once-in-ten-years comment…very random, I know. I still love and follow this blog regularly, by the way.
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nancy said on August 28, 2020 at 5:02 pm
Hi, Steph! I should add this happened to a friend of mine’s dog. Just he and his mom walking their bichon on a leash past a house, and that household’s pit got loose and attacked him. Two adults were pounding on the pit bull’s head with a rock and couldn’t get it to let go. Finally my friend ran back to the house to fetch a handgun. While he was gone, the pit bull finally let go and ran. They called the police and it was euthanized. I honestly don’t understand why people like them so much. That essay by David Denby’s ex-wife in the New Yorker some years back was simply nutso. And if you really want to shake your head, google “‘ira glass’ + piney” and spend the rest of the day shaking your head.
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on August 28, 2020 at 3:58 pm
Jim Gaffigan = Hot Pockets comic
(Due to COVID, my son is being given the middle school band program as the in person instructor though he’s student teaching this semester. Nervous & proud both: the regular middle school band teacher & asst. marching band director has a health condition that’s keeping him on at home & online work only, so the student teacher is getting 75% of the class at the school. Choirs are sadly but necessarily shut down, and we’ll see how the instrumentalist precautions work out.)
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LAMary said on August 28, 2020 at 4:12 pm
Sherri, my first NYT boss wrote a book in the seventies about the rise of women’s tennis and the role of the Virginia Slims program. The title is A Long Way Baby and it’s by Grace Lichtenstein. In spite of it being 40 somthing years old it’s a good read. I had an email back and forth with June Thomas, who writes about women’s sports among other things for Slate and she told me that the reason she went into sports writing was that book. So while it may seem a little dated in some ways, the insights into the tennis players (Chrissie Evert, Rosie Casals, Billie Jean King) are interesting.
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Jakash said on August 28, 2020 at 4:30 pm
“And no, I didn’t watch Trump’s speech last night. I don’t have 70 minutes of my life to give to that asshole, and Twitter was doing most of the heavy lifting.”
Hear! Hear! A virtuoso example of some of the Twitter lifting: Daniel Dale (now of CNN) watched the speech so we didn’t have to. Here’s a truly impressive, rapid-fire 3:15 take-down of (some of) the Maximum Leader’s litany of lies.
https://twitter.com/ryanstruyk/status/1299197966687842304
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Sherri said on August 28, 2020 at 4:37 pm
Women’s tennis has so many good stories, and has been ahead of the curve in so many ways. Billie Jean King began the fight for pay equity back in the 70s, and Venus Williams continued it. Renee Richards fought for trans inclusion. (The ESPN documentary on Renee Richards is also interesting.) I’m not even much of a tennis fan, but I appreciate what the women in tennis have done.
I blame women’s sports writers for my Twitter addiction. I started reading Twitter back when all my favorite women’s sports writers were being laid off from the outlets where they worked, and Twitter was the best way to keep up with their work as they moved from place to place and freelanced and cobbled together a career.
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Sherri said on August 28, 2020 at 4:41 pm
Some days, I feel really old. I just had to tell a candidate for Congress that I remember when violations of the Hatch Act were a big deal resulting in Congressional hearings for months. She didn’t.
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Ann said on August 28, 2020 at 5:17 pm
Those are some scary looking houses there. I really admire you for taking on this job. And yes, I also have plenty of friends who think “pitties” are just the sweetest most misunderstood dogs in the world, but my dog, who used to adore the dog park, can no longer go there, or even play with other dogs, because a couple of attacks by you-know-what-breed have made her skittish and defensive.
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Sherri said on August 28, 2020 at 5:30 pm
Evidently, trump said in his speech that if Biden won, he’d turn every city into Portland. Really? Is that a promise? I love Portland! I want my city to be more like Portland!
I want my taco truck, too.
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Heather said on August 28, 2020 at 7:53 pm
I have a cousin in Kenosha who is proudly racist (the only one of his kind in my large extended family, I’m happy to say, except he has brainwashed his sister’s teenage son, so I guess we have two), and I found out today that he was running around with his gun during the riots. Of course he was. I guess he told off some woman spray-painting a sign, then she spray-painted him, he pulled out his gun, and a bunch of people chased him. Almost got his ass kicked and rightly so.
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Deborah said on August 28, 2020 at 8:11 pm
one of the weirder evenings when I tried to write a comment about the general condition of our situation and I can’t put one word after the other. It’s all so bizarre. Counting the days until this nightmare is over.
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Deborah said on August 28, 2020 at 9:21 pm
May I be so bold as to ask what your sleep patterns are during this pandemic? When do you fall asleep, wake up, fall back asleep and finally arise? As for me I go to bed early, usually around 8, then I read for an hour or so. I awaken at somewhere around 2:30 – 4. I read for awhile, sometimes go back to sleep depending how disturbing my dream was. Then am awake and finally get up and make coffee around 6. Some nights I get much less sleep, but usually never more.
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Deborah said on August 28, 2020 at 9:43 pm
I don’t know about you all but I’m reluctant to put a Biden sticker on my car for fear of retaliation. I wonder if Trumpers are likely to key my car or worse. I never thought of this before this election. Sad.
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Julie Robinson said on August 28, 2020 at 10:07 pm
Deborah, a couple of days ago I was trying to write about my feelings and absolutely couldn’t put three coherent words together. I started writing something half a dozen times. I think I was on overload.
As for sleeping, what even is that.
I just got a heartbreaking facebook message from a young friend who is finishing her last year of college remotely. She’s surrounded by conservative older people and is in despair. I told her that her anger is righteous and prophetic, and that she should block people who are making nasty comments to her about the Black Lives Matter movement. I told her I was a safe person when she needed to vent. Now I’m wondering if it was enough.
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Suzanne said on August 28, 2020 at 10:28 pm
I usually go to bed around 10 and read for a while. I have had very strange dreams in the past few months and I imagine it’ll get worse.i was doing ok until past few weeks and the reality of a Trump second term is freaking me out. Because if there is a second, there will be a third, and a fourth. And then we’ll have his kids.
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LAMary said on August 28, 2020 at 10:50 pm
I would go crazy surrounded by Trump fans. Just having a civil conversation with my brother is tough. He spews Fox lies. Tells me to look it up, research it. I tell him no, I know that the US did not lose 750000 jobs every quarter for the entire Obama administration. I know that Trump did not bring on the best economy in the history of the United States. I know that the tax cuts did nothing good at all for most people, in fact decreasing the size of my refund significantly. But no. I must be listening to the MSM. They lie. They are conspiring against the president. He gets very worked up. I’m listening to propaganda. I ask him if he heard the president suggest we inject bleach. He said it was a joke. I ask if he heard the president wanted to sell Puerto Rico and buy Greenland. Another joke. And how about nuking a hurricane. Yet again it was an example of Trump’s sparkling wit. I get off the phone and I want to go punch a wall or something. My brother is a fairly bright guy but his critical thinking skills have faded with age.
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Dexter Friend said on August 29, 2020 at 4:54 am
Gaffigan has been so clean this surprised the comic-world, according to XM-103 people on Friday. I suppose CBS ain’t a-gonna like it, as he has his homey spot on CBS SMN .
I am glad for the dog talk. My daughter’s family in Commercial Point is fostering a nice Aussie Cattle Dog now, and are talking about adopting a Stratford pit-mix. I hope the Steph-Nance postings I am sending them will save their lives. I do not trust those fucking pit bulls at all.
And fuck Karen and all those assholes crammed onto the lawn without masks Thursday night listening to Trump. And Melania’s dress, copied from a dress pattern favored by Eva Braun? What the fuck are we to think? I HATE those people ! I also resent all the cable networks who have been showing Hitler videos all my goddam life.
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Joe Kobiela said on August 29, 2020 at 8:37 am
I think after watching Seattle, Portland,Minneapolis,Chicago,Kenosha,Atlanta, Washington and New York burned and looted in the last 3 months with innocent people loosing their livelihood from people who, and maybe I’m going out on a limb here, didn’t vote for Trump, worrying about a scratch on your car is way down the list of things you should worry about.
Pilot Joe
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Mark P said on August 29, 2020 at 9:10 am
I got a text from a friend in Littleton CO a few days ago. She had gotten discouraged by all the Trump signs in people’s yards, so she put out a Biden sign. Her neighbor called to thank her. She said she had been afraid to put out a Biden sign, but now that my friend had done it, she was going to. Her 14-year-old son was afraid his classmates would make fun of him, so her 21-year-old daughter made a bullet list of argument points.
The sad thing is that she said I was the only one she could tell this to who would appreciate it. Her parents and an uncle with whom she has been close for years have drunk the cool aide.
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Suzanne said on August 29, 2020 at 9:12 am
I have a relative and a good friend living in NYC. I speak to both frequently. Neither has mentioned rampant rioting that is supposedly happening there.
I also have relatives & friends living in Chicago. They have not mentioned rampant rioting.
And yet, I am told all the time by people in Indiana how terrible it is in these places, how horrible it must be, how frightened everyone living there must be.
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Dororthy said on August 29, 2020 at 9:37 am
I bought six Biden signs about a month ago. I regularly put out three of them in the yard and bring them in at night. I’m already mad about so many things in life, I just don’t want to give myself something else to be mad about if they get stolen. These 3 are getting kind of banged up from my poking them up and down in the dry lawn so much, so I’ll retire them soon and start using the other three.
My sleep patterns are altered, and I hope not permanently. I go upstairs between 8 & 9, usually am reading something in that time (prefer a book but sometimes it’s reading a screen). I tune into Rachel Maddow and can get through about half of it before my eyelids get too heavy. I”ve been having weird and sometimes scary dreams that I don’t always remember the next day. Fortunately I can usually get back to sleep but once in awhile I can’t. Then I get up, come downstairs and try to read, or I knit. I feel like I’m always struggling to push desperate kinds of thoughts out of my head about what the future is going to look like. If the Criminal in the White House wins I can’t even fathom what it will do to my psyche. When he won my primary worry was he was going to get us into a war, my son in the Army would die in the process of fighting it, and then I’d have to find a way to end the Criminal’s life. Anyone who thinks he is a good person in any way whatsoever is going to have their own demons to deal with, one way or the other, eventually. I thought I was a pretty good person deep down. Why is it, then, that all I want is for each Trump supporter to suffer in some way? He is a cancer on the goodness of this country and it’s going to take generations to rid us of it.
I was relieved to hear I’m not the only one who feels that way about pit bulls, too. A family that moved in on my street a few months ago takes theirs out for a walk on a very thick leash while also rolling along their little one’s stroller. If Nestle is out in the yard with me and I see them coming, I tackle her, if necessary, to be sure she doesn’t chase after them. She loves other dogs and thinks they’re all going to love her back. I wouldn’t trust one ever around anyone.
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Mark P said on August 29, 2020 at 9:41 am
Yes, Atlanta has disappeared into a mass of rubble and dead bodies hidden by a shroud of smoke. The mainstream news media in Atlanta are running video from the past to pretend that 99.9999 percent of the city remains peaceful and safe. At least in the fevered dreams of the fearful Trump supporters.
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4dbirds said on August 29, 2020 at 9:41 am
I live in the DC suburbs and my son at 17th and U NW and we’re surprised that JTFP thinks there is rioting here.
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Jeff Borden said on August 29, 2020 at 10:11 am
My best buddy lives in a township about 35 miles north of Cincinnati in Butler County, Ohio, where the county sheriff is an acolyte of Joe Arpaio and “Don’t Tread on Me” flags fly above six-bedroom, five-bathroom homes on huge landscaped lots. John Boehner used to be his congressman. Yesterday on a bike ride, he saw a half-dozen Biden-Harris signs. Four years ago, there were zero HRC signs.
But Michael Moore is out ranting that tRumpy the Klown may well be reelected because his fans are so much more “energized” than Democratic voters. He correctly called the 2016 race. It’s going to be all about turnout, I suppose, and how effective Republican states are in suppressing votes this fall, a skill they have honed ever since the Roberts court declared an end to the Voting Rights Act.
One last thing: I don’t ever want to see the White House –the People’s House– used for that kind of Nuremberg-style rally again. Congress needs to put some teeth into the fucking Hatch Act. It looked like a tacky Vegas stunt Thursday night.
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Joe Kobiela said on August 29, 2020 at 10:16 am
4birds,
So the statues torn down and graffiti sprayed all over along with the people screaming at people trying to eat and those peaceful people surrounding Rand Paul and his wife, threatening to kill them? That was all made up?
And Susan, you didn’t see the riots down the Magnificent mile?
Pilot Joe
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ROGirl said on August 29, 2020 at 10:18 am
Joe. Do I count as one of the innocent people who lost their livelihood? No burning or looting necessary when it came to the loss of my job. Just a phone call.
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4dbirds said on August 29, 2020 at 10:59 am
JTFP, I’m so glad you brought up that pussy Rand Paul. He was being escorted out by police, the police shoved people on the sidewalk, a sidewalk they had every right to be on and they shoved the cop back. He stepped off the curb and bumped into the fragile Paul. No one attacked him. All he was subjected to was Americans legally and peacefully protesting. Get the fuck out of your bubble. Also I don’t give a flip about a monument or a statue. I care about people and the rights we are supposed to have in this country. Washington, DC is a lovely city and the only thing marring it right now is the trash in the WH.
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Mark P said on August 29, 2020 at 11:29 am
Let’s see, number of people killed in Atlanta by “rioters”, as far as I can tell: one. Number of people in Fulton County, where Atlanta is, killed by coronavirus: 17. You can lay the blame squarely at Donald Trump’s feet (and “Governor” Kemp, the really stupid Trump wannabe) for most of those deaths because of his response to the pandemic.
It’s really pointless to argue with stupid people. They cannot be convinced by facts or logic. They will always find a way to justify ignoring any facts you offer, and will have their assortment of lies and distortions to counter.
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Heather said on August 29, 2020 at 11:32 am
I didn’t see any reports that the crowd surrounding Rand Paul threatened to kill him. They were angry and let him know it directly, which is our right. He might want to look up the phrase “you reap what you sow.”
It’s not like they were armed to the teeth and showing up at the state capitol to threaten the governor of Michigan, which is something that actually happened.
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nancy said on August 29, 2020 at 11:45 am
As far as I’m concerned, Rand Paul shouldn’t be able to walk down any street in America without people yelling at him.
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Jakash said on August 29, 2020 at 11:51 am
Yeah, PJ, as ROGirl points out, your president has, in his pathetic, bumbling, criminal manner, inadvertently caused far, far more innocent people in this country to lose their livelihoods than all the looters in the history of the nation combined.
Yes or no, do you realize that your president, when he could have put this country on the right track at the end of February said of Covid 19 cases: “You have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero”? Uh, that was false. We’re approaching 6 million cases. Not very close to zero. Was he boldly highlighting his ignorance and incompetence or was he lying? Does it matter?
Though you’re incapable of seeing or admitting it, for the next couple months everything in this country besides removing the criminal charlatan from the Oval Office “is way down the list of things you should worry about.”
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Sherri said on August 29, 2020 at 12:27 pm
In Seattle, far more businesses have been shut down and people lost jobs because of COVID than due to any rioting. The impact just of all the tech employees working from home was far greater. 50000 Amazon employees in Seattle no longer there? 30000 Microsoft employees no longer in Redmond every day? Huge.
The first impact I heard was all the local hotels laying off people, because there was no more Microsoft travel. It’s going to lead to the city having to lay off public works employees, because the water and sewer utilty revenues are way, way down because Microsoft is shut down and not using water at the normal rate.
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Sherri said on August 29, 2020 at 12:30 pm
But hey, that’s all going away on November 4, right? We all did this just to own the conservatives.
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Jeff Borden said on August 29, 2020 at 12:36 pm
Oh, Joe. People can accept that looting and burning are poor responses to systemic racism in our legal system but still understand how it can come to pass. Besides, as I’ve noted previous times, I’ve seen thousands of well-off white people smashing windows, overturning cars, looting stores, setting fires, assaulting cops. . .but it was usually associated with a sports championship.
Guys like you sneered at Colin Kaepernick and other black athletes for kneeling during the national anthem or peacefully blocking streets to protest racism. But when they erupt in a way that focuses the spotlight on them through street violence and looting, you tut-tut in horror.
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4dbirds said on August 29, 2020 at 1:01 pm
While JTFP is whiffing around in his happy little world, this is what brown people have to go through. https://www.stevelocke.com/blog/i-fit-the-description
A few years ago but still relevant.
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Sherri said on August 29, 2020 at 1:30 pm
So, do the trump lovers like our resident troll think the protests will go away on November 4 if trump wins? Of course not, they know they protests will get bigger. What they want, what they’re hoping and voting for, is that their big strong hero will send troops into those terrible places and occupy them and shoot a few people and put us in our place. You already hear trump talking about states and cities led by Democrats like we’re the enemy, not part of the US.
They’ve been taught over the last 30 years to regard Democrats as illegimate holders of power, who wield it to harm them.
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Icarus said on August 29, 2020 at 2:08 pm
we had some looting and some rioting in Chicago and looking at the FB statuses of a few conservatives I keep around to balance my bubble….these lilly white girls are shating in their pants because they are being forced to confront things they willfully ignored all their lives.
folks, take a look at this day in NNC
http://nancynall.com/2008/08/29/whew-i-need-a-cigarette/
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Joe Kobiela said on August 29, 2020 at 2:13 pm
When Trump shut down air travel to China he was called a racist while Big Fridge Pelosi was telling people to go to China town, Quomo was responsible for putting infected people back in nursing homes, Chicago’s mayor has a public paid police force protecting Her house, how many black on black shootings in the last 90 days nation wide? I’ve heard numbers as high as 1600, lost your job? Tough shit when I was laid off I was told too bad we’re using robots to do your job, Need a job, move to Indiana most places here have help wanted signs out. Would you have to move? Too bad for you, what’s more important? Food or where you live. We all get it heard it a thousand times, Trumps fault, just wait well get him on Russia, impeachment, pee tapes, Covid, Stormy, he says mean things, guess what kiddies, 4th year still President. Sleep on that, oh wait Trumps so mean I cant sleep and have nightmares, good lord grow a pair, and Dorothy it may not mean much cause you hate him so much but so far he’s the only President I can think of that hasn’t got us in a war in how long and is actually withdrawing troops, I pray your son stays safe.
Pilot Joe
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4dbirds said on August 29, 2020 at 2:30 pm
Joe the fucking pilot you are a piece of shit. How dare you mock Dorothy who has actual skin in the game with her military son. How fucking dare you. Did you serve? As someone who has had a child die let me tell you, I pray you never experience that hell and I can’t stand you.
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ROGirl said on August 29, 2020 at 3:56 pm
Get the fuck out of here.
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Jakash said on August 29, 2020 at 4:16 pm
The answer to my “yes or no” question, unsurprisingly: “Look, a squirrel!”
Whatever brand of Christianity sports “piss off the liberals” as its primary tenet and preaches that “Tough shit” is an appropriate reply to somebody who’s lost their job sure is a curious one.
PJ, along with the carnival barker Trump and the performers assembled for the 4-day RNC circus, sure *sound* pretty angry for people who are supposedly so happy during the current regime.
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Mark P said on August 29, 2020 at 4:39 pm
Did you know that “Chinatown” is the same as China? Yes! Many’s the time I have sat on the docks of Chinatown watching the cargo ships depart carrying iPhones back to the US. And it’s so convenient to be able to get there without a passport!
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Deborah said on August 29, 2020 at 4:54 pm
You sound pretty angry Joe, I thought you were so happy?
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nancy said on August 29, 2020 at 5:04 pm
Joe, seriously — You’re no longer participating in a discussion, you’re trolling. Cut it out.
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Jakash said on August 29, 2020 at 5:13 pm
Thanks for the heads up about that 2008 entry from the Wayback Machine, Icarus. Is it harder to believe that it’s been 12 years since that optimistic candidacy, or that it’s *only* been 12 years?
Also, many times Coozledad would rip Jeff (tmmo) for being a “torture apologist” and Sarah Palin fan. Since I was not on board this merry craft back then, I hadn’t seen much evidence of that. Uh, now I have. The first comment there has not aged well, to say the least.
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Jeff Borden said on August 29, 2020 at 5:15 pm
It’s true tRumpy the Klown hasn’t started a war. . .yet. . .but he’s been mighty busy making things easier for Russia, Syria and Saudi Arabia. He’s fulfilling Vladimir Putin’s fondest dreams by moving thousands of troops out of Germany and openly sniping at NATO. And he’s bypassing Congress to deal powerful weapons to totalitarian regimes in the Middle East. All of these actions will resonate through the coming years particularly the weakening of our strategic alliances.
Meanwhile, 180,000-plus Americans have felled by a virus he ignored, mocked and downplayed.
Yeeesh, Jakash.Re: 2008. I did a double-take when reading waterboarding is not torture. I believe the Geneva Conventions has a somewhat different view.
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Sherri said on August 29, 2020 at 5:18 pm
We’ve been in constant war.
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Julie Robinson said on August 29, 2020 at 5:20 pm
Because Trump did nothing about Covid 19, the travel industry shut down. Three people from my husband’s office were furloughed. The first, in April, has been looking for a job ever since. She finally got word this week that she likely is going to be hired.
The second person was let go last week.
The third person is my husband, who is retiring early. He is thrilled about it, but we are losing six months of income and three months of health insurance. They will furlough him, so he’ll have insurance for 90 days. It’s unlikely he’ll qualify for unemployment assistance as he has a small pension from his previous job.
We’ll have to make adjustments, but we’ll be fine. That Tesla he was dreaming of buying on retirement is gone, but we’ll still be able to pay the bills.
Oh, and those jobs Joe sees open? Those are part-time jobs, the kind where you need two or three to scrape by.
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on August 29, 2020 at 5:28 pm
Jakash, I think I apologized about five times for that stupid comment in subsequent years before I realized it wasn’t going to be accepted. I was wrong, have said so, am willing to say it again. Wrong. Incorrect. Stupid. Irritated by personal matters at the time and politically reactive. I was wrong.
I could make you a list of other things I’ve been wrong about. It’s not short!
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john (not mccain) said on August 29, 2020 at 5:29 pm
Y’all should take it easy on disease-spreading Joe. It can’t be easy to have to hear the screaming of the little girls everytime he closes his eyes.
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beb said on August 29, 2020 at 5:40 pm
I was looking at this picture from the RNC of the Trump family and was struck by the appearance of Barron Trump.
https://img.huffingtonpost.com/asset/5f49579524000057009215d1.jpeg?cache=efordyqgpd&ops=scalefit_720_noupscale
Besides towering over his father (who claims to be 6’3″) seems like a zombie compared to the other people on the stage. Hooded eyes and no affect face. It raises the question again whether he’s autistic or not.
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Jakash said on August 29, 2020 at 6:05 pm
Oh, sure, Jtmmo, a non-apology apology. “If anyone was offended…” (Uh, that’s a joke — seemed pretty unequivocal to me.) Hey, I have no problem accepting it, not that anybody cares. It seemed like a very uncharacteristic comment from today’s perspective. Now, about SheWho. I get that you probably thought she was hot…
Whatevs. It was impudent of me to bring it up.
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Joe Kobiela said on August 29, 2020 at 7:02 pm
Dorthy,
If I offended you I apologise, it wasn’t my intention, the rest I stand by.
Pilot Joe
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LAMary said on August 29, 2020 at 7:02 pm
Joe. trump is doing his best to get a race war going. His unmarked guys were doing a great job of escalating violence in Portland and if he wins I bet we’ll see more of that. I lost my job because of covid. 300 people at the company did. Now I have a job hiring epidemiologists, case investigators. contact tracers. My contract for this job is open ended. The people I hire are contracted through March, possibly July. None of them seem to take that as great news. They’re happy to be employed but not about the projection of the duration. Trump so thoroughly,stupidly, arrogantly fucked this up and he brags about it like it was a triumph. He’s so much more dangerous than we expected. You voted for him and will do it again. Shame on you. You are enabling that monster.
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Jessica Weissman said on August 29, 2020 at 7:33 pm
In the matter of pit bulls, I am sorry to hear about the several awful experiences recounted here. Anecdotes are not data, but I’ll put up mine for some counterbalance.
We adopted a 4-year-old pit bull mix who had been used as a backyard breeder for her whole life. She was a bundle of love from the day we met her. In the 7 years we had her she only met one person she didn’t love instantly. As it turned out she had good reason to except him from her general attitude toward all humans. She put up with kittens using her as a combination of jungle gym and bean bag chair. In her lifetime she probably did more play-growling than real growling. She was never aggressive toward people who came into our house, which is more than I can say about our current beagle mix or the hound mix we once had. She kept an eye on them to protect us, but she was courteous and sometimes overtly affectionate to them.
Also, there is no actual pit bull breed. The name is used for four similar breeds: American Pitbull Terrier, American Staffordshire Terrier, Staffordshire Bull Terrier and American Bully. Other similar-looking breeds get called pitbulls sometimes too.
Many dogs of many breeds have snapped and turned on their owners or companions. When the non-PBs do that it’s considered an individual failing on the part of that dog. When a PB does it, it’s considered evidence of what the whole group is like. Sounds like non-PB privilege to me.
Again, I’m sorry to hear the horrible incidents you describe. I don’t intend to minimize them.
Thanks,
Jessica
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Little Bird said on August 29, 2020 at 8:38 pm
In the words of Jim Gaffifan, Fuck you Joe.
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Julie Robinson said on August 29, 2020 at 9:02 pm
I have to admit that I’m afraid of most dogs, even small ones. But they all seem to loooooove me and want to jump up on me and love on me in their own special way. I can’t really pinpoint where the fear came from except that we briefly had a dog when I was five or six, and I know it jumped up on me all the time. It was some kind of poodle and good sized, so I probably got knocked down. But I was sturdy and I know it didn’t bite me, so why the fear? Dunno. I try very hard to hide it when I’m around dogs and especially their owners, but it’s down there, deep and primal.
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on August 29, 2020 at 9:24 pm
There’s a book coming out in a couple of weeks that I think many here would appreciate (enjoy isn’t quite the right word); I do appear in it but gain no fiscal advantage from sales of it other than satisfaction on behalf of the author, who has become a friend over the last four years and is the founder of Denison’s narrative non-fiction program. He’s helped me see the reality behind the phrase “every overdose is a policy failure.” It’s wonderfully weird to read a book in which every character I know or at least have met, and I think he says a great deal about this county in particular and the world of addiction in general.
Virtual book launch open to anyone on Zoom: https://pen.org/event/this-is-ohio-jack-shuler-virtual-book-launch/
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basset said on August 29, 2020 at 9:47 pm
“Every overdose is a policy failure”… say more about that.
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Sherri said on August 29, 2020 at 9:47 pm
Court evangelical Eric Metaxis swung a punch at a protestor the other evening in DC after the illegal trump rally. Rod Dreher spends paragraphs saying he probably shouldn’t have done it before deciding the dirty hippie had it coming because, you know, those dirty hippies are so uncivil.
They can always find a way to defend violence against the other, whether it’s punching dirty hippies or caging children, or murdering George Floyd.
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Joe Kobiela said on August 29, 2020 at 9:54 pm
Little bird, I’ll send you a quarter call someone who cares.
Pilot Joe
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LAMary said on August 29, 2020 at 11:50 pm
Joe, I truly don’t know why you come in here. Your opinion isn’t respected. Your grammar and spelling are ridiculed. No one’s ideas are changed by you and you get told to fuck off pretty often. What is your point?
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Dexter Friend said on August 30, 2020 at 12:38 am
Quomo. Madison Square Garden, 10 rounds, Saturday night. Quomo versus Quasitrumpo. Quomo…that’s a good one!
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Sherri said on August 30, 2020 at 1:22 am
It’s obviously because he’s so happy, LAMary.
Happy, happy Pilot Joe. He’s not resentful of liberals at all, nosiree.
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on August 30, 2020 at 7:37 am
Basset, in brief, the idea “every overdose is a policy failure” is a critique in two directions — that the “iron law of prohibition” style approach, whether in 1908 or 1914 or 1919 or 1971 or today, creates its own deadly unintended consequences, and that the moral failure view of addiction leads directly to the “bad choices” presumption of overdose spikes. Overdoses, I would say to my startled 2012 persona already critiqued above, are not best understood as poor decisions made by weak people, but the result of legal and cultural factors which have to be addressed before you can stop the dying, assuming that this is what we are actually trying to do.
Its polar opposite is the sentiment expressed by a local legislator in Ohio in the book, and only slightly more obliquely by too many parishioners to me over the last few years: let them die. In a formal sense, “three tries and you’re out” is the policy compliment to “every overdose is a policy failure” . . . telling EMS that they only have to revive addicts three times, and then their obligation to save life ends. It’s never been formally passed anywhere, but the idea is not uncommon — and the fatigue of some fire service and ambulance crews from having to enter scenes of severe poverty (yes, they always have done so; no, never as often in the last few years) sometimes multiple times a day to revive strung-out, wasted, meth-ravaged blue-skinned unconscious people . . . is real. They are themselves casualties of the drug war as they harden and in some cases push for “three strikes” policies.
But if you start from the basic humanity of the person on that floor, and work your way out through an understanding of the economic and social and political forces that led to their addiction and now often fentanyl-triggered unconsciousness, including even global geopolitical factors, you end up with “every overdose is a policy failure.”
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basset said on August 30, 2020 at 8:47 am
The only person I’ve ever known who died from an overdose couldn’t have identified any of those forces, he just wanted to get high – wherever and on whatever he could. What kind of policy and social change do you think might have saved him?
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Joe Kobiela said on August 30, 2020 at 9:40 am
Sherri,
What’s there to be resentful of?
Bills are paid, kids are doing great, 37yrs married, dream job, pension and insurance, good health, yep I’m happy.
Pilot Joe
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LAMary said on August 30, 2020 at 10:07 am
So happy you feel the need to come into a group of people whom you know have very different beliefs, present either copy pasted remarks or illiterate babbles, and hurtful comments? I gotta tell you, Joe. I’m not overwhelmingly happy. I worry a lot about the immediate future. I worry that my sons will never get their careers back on track. I worry that the country is going to continue on the path towards intolerance, isolation and malignant nationalism. I am however, grateful. I still have my house, a job (for now), my sons are healthy and have grown into good men, and I’m grateful for all the people who are fighting the good fight.
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Heather said on August 30, 2020 at 11:02 am
As long as you got yours, huh Joe? Classic.
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basset said on August 30, 2020 at 11:02 am
Was Jim Gaffigan not on Sunday Morning today, or did I just miss him?
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Jeff Borden said on August 30, 2020 at 11:02 am
Mary Mitchell in today’s Chicago Sun-Times offers a fascinating look at how the white high school dropout vigilante who killed two protestors in Kenosha is being lionized versus how he’d be depicted if he were black. BTW, at last count, some rightwing Christian website has raised more than $220,000 to support the little weasel.
https://chicago.suntimes.com/authors/mary-mitchell
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Jakash said on August 30, 2020 at 11:07 am
Heather beat me to it. But “Tough shit” to those losing jobs, followed by comment #83 is about as succinct an evocation of the stereotypical “I’ve got mine” Republican mindset as you could hope to see.
I assume part of the reason that PJ comments is because he’s been part of the nn.c group for a very long time — much longer than I have, that’s for sure. Back in the old days, things weren’t quite as polarized, and more of his comments were of the chit-chat variety, maybe?
I was going to say that perhaps he has a hard time wrapping his head around the fact that avidly supporting a traitorous, incompetent criminal is a deal-breaker for the reasonable folks in the nn.c community. But, of late, he obviously just spouts off counter-factual talking points to piss us off, and seems to have largely abandoned the idea of getting along. Clearly, his comments have been weaponized by the right-wing bullshit blabosphere. Or perhaps he’s just always been a troll.
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Julie Robinson said on August 30, 2020 at 11:10 am
Nope, he’s always been a troll.
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Sherri said on August 30, 2020 at 11:59 am
I’ve known a fair number of addicts, and none of them just wanted to get high for the fun of it. All were running from something, that the drug temporarily made go away. Addicts know their life is messed up, but it’s hard to make the transition from the drug being part of the solution to the drug being part of the problem.
I bet a whole bunch of those three strikes people would call themselves pro-life, too. So much more interested in saving abstract fetuses than in real, messy human beings.
Start treating addiction like a public health problem rather than an individual moral failing or a criminal matter, and it’s a beginning. Unfortunately, here’s another area where white supremacy has impacted how we approach policy choices, with the war on (some) drugs approach.
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Sherri said on August 30, 2020 at 12:02 pm
Your posts tell a different story, Joe.
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LAMary said on August 30, 2020 at 12:14 pm
I watched most of This Morning and no Jim Gaffigan. There was an interesting story about octopi, however.
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alex said on August 30, 2020 at 12:20 pm
Joe’s always been a fucking troll. He even suckered me into apologizing to him once by acting all butt hurt when I gave him the obscenity-laced thrashing that he deserved. That was maybe ten or fifteen years ago.
Since then he has pretty much dispensed with the nice guy act, not that it redeemed him any. It was just part of his whole passive-aggressive head game. I’ve come to regard him as nothing more than a fly on the wall that’s gonna get smashed one of these days when the proprietress has had enough of him attacking her guests.
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Joe Kobiela said on August 30, 2020 at 12:22 pm
Not got mine, earned mine, through hard work, sacrifice, and perseverance, when things didn’t go as planned we didn’t cry about how unfair it was we toughed it out and found a way to get thru it. Not going to apologise to you or anyone else.
Pilot Joe
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ROGirl said on August 30, 2020 at 12:27 pm
Not just a troll. You’re an asshole, too.
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David C said on August 30, 2020 at 12:49 pm
A union job that paid decent wages and had a pension plan didn’t hurt, did it? That job now pays $14 with a 401(k) if you can afford to contribute. I know factory work is damned hard and I’m sure you worked hard at it too, Joe. I work at a company that’s still a union shop and it burns me whenever I hear a coworker put them down. They are paid well and they earn it. But today most people work just as hard for half the money if they’re lucky. You’re lucky to have worked at a manufacturing plant when you did Joe but thinking you are where you are solely due to merit is nonsense. You had a lot of things break your way.
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Sherri said on August 30, 2020 at 12:54 pm
Jeff(tmmo), I have a question for you. LookIng further down the comments in that earlier nn.c post, you say you want to be persistent in reminding folks there are people who are conservative for reasons. (You don’t enumerate the reasons.)
Do you still consider yourself conservative, and what does that mean to you?
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LAMary said on August 30, 2020 at 1:24 pm
In my own experience with conservative folks, like my entire family, they are very anti-union. The union members I know, SEIU, UHW mostly, are liberal. They vote Democrat. Not 100 percent, but most for sure. But those are generalizations. Let’s talk about working hard. Joe, most people who work work hard. I’m paid for exactly 8 hours a day right now, non exempt. A temp. I cannot put in for overtime. I am usually working 10 hours, but paid for 8, but I’m grateful for the job. If I’m hiring people for positions that require they go into situations where there are likely people who have covid 19 they’re making about 33 percent over minimum wage. Lots of the people who apply are overqualified. In a better time they would be making three times as much. As someone who worked hard, did all the good prudent stuff, you are hardly unique. But you were lucky too. Stop congratulating yourself.
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Icarus said on August 30, 2020 at 2:01 pm
It is almost like there is a difference between the two men. I just can’t put my finger on it. Is it the type of vehicle they were driving?
https://twitter.com/shannonsharpe/status/1299783390573465600?s=21
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Colleen said on August 30, 2020 at 2:09 pm
Ah yes,the old “I worked hard and earned what I have, if you don’t have enough, you must not work hard enough” bullshit. Republicans hate to acknowledge the breaks they got. It’s all bootstraps. I wouldn’t be where I am if not for the family I was lucky enough to be born into, the quality public school I was able to attend, and the college my parents were able to send me to. When I lost my job, I was able to get loans and go back to school. I was able to move to Florida when a good job opportunity presented itself. I have been LUCKY, in addition to working hard. If people earned according to how hard they worked, farm workers and fast food workers, just to name a couple, would be making a hell of a lot more than I am.
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Jim said on August 30, 2020 at 2:11 pm
Joe, you were asked point blank if you served in the military. Did I just miss your answer?
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LAMary said on August 30, 2020 at 2:41 pm
In some ways I’ve been very lucky. In others really unlucky. I just keep on truckin. I know that some of the good and some of the bad were my own fault and some were not. I also know that there are a lot of people who never got even the small breaks I did because they were not white, not educated or not in the right place. When I see homeless people I know that by some slight twist of fate that could be me. Don’t kid yourself that it could never be you, Joe.
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Deborah said on August 30, 2020 at 2:52 pm
Someone may have already said this, but reading that 2008 post made me sad because there were comments by Moe and MichaelG and yes Caliban. Lots of names of people I miss who have moved on from here like Gasman, Jolene, Kurt and more. But it’s amazing how many people are still here after all these years. Kudos to Nancy for creating this comfortable place where people can express themselves, learn and grow.
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LAMary said on August 30, 2020 at 3:05 pm
I miss Ashley, Maggie Jochild, Coozledad, Moe, Whitebeard, Michael G. Probably more if I gave it some thought.
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beb said on August 30, 2020 at 3:19 pm
Joe’s relationship with this group is like the relationship my wife has with her cousin. She’s a Trumper and my wife is not. Even though her cousin knows my wife loves her she can not do the one thing other people do in this situation — not talk about politics. Instead it seems like the cousin goes out of her way to bring politics up every time they chat. It hurts my wife enormously that she can’t have a peaceful conversation with one of her few living relatives. It’s like there is something in the blood that makes her cousin want to be right, want to dominate the conversation.
Joe can be very pleasant and interesting when he’s talking about what he’s doing (flying) but like a Pit Bull every so often he turns on us and snaps.
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Brandon said on August 30, 2020 at 3:32 pm
@LAMary: Don’t forget Hattie (1939-2017), who was born in the San Francisco area, and lived in Wisconsin and Portland, among other places, before moving to Hilo in 1996.
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4dbirds said on August 30, 2020 at 3:33 pm
I don’t want anyone to think that military service is a prerequisite to be a good American. Not at all. I do however question those who are all into worshiping law enforcement and military life and they’ve never really experienced either. I know what it feel like to be locked and loaded on and to have scuds coming my way. So when Joe says he prays for Dorothy’s son, I say GTFOOH, no you don’t. You have no idea what it feels like to be in that situation or to worry about a child of your own in that situation.
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alex said on August 30, 2020 at 3:49 pm
Went to the grocery store (Kroger) and couldn’t find anything I was looking for including paper towels, which they haven’t had for weeks. Went to Home Depot and the place is stacked to the rafters with paper towels. What’s up with that?
A neighbor who’s a laid-off banquet chef has been going to the local food bank lately and sees firsthand just how much overstock is being donated by Kroger in all kinds of categories. He thinks he should go ask Kroger if they need an inventory control manager who knows what he’s doing because the cost of the amount of food wasted in a week could probably pay a good salary.
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Jim said on August 30, 2020 at 3:53 pm
4dbirds: I don’t mean to imply that military service is any kind of requirement for an opinion. I do want to know if someone who sounds like a chicken hawk is in fact a chicken hawk.
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Deborah said on August 30, 2020 at 3:59 pm
The amount of food wasted is mind boggling. I worked on a project, redesigning Boston Market stores (we did a prototype but it didn’t go forward after that) it was owned by McDonald’s at the time, since sold it off. One of the higher ups at McDonald’s, long gone, this was 2004/2005 told us that something like 80% of the food goes to waste. I don’t remember the exact number but I was astonished to hear it.
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4dbirds said on August 30, 2020 at 4:06 pm
Jim, we are in agreement.
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LAMary said on August 30, 2020 at 4:18 pm
When I managed a little gourmet shop in NYC we would give our unsold perishable stuff to guy in the neighborhood who had a pizza shop and gave away his unsold food, along with ours, to a local soup kitchen. Mostly we had bread but sometimes there were pastries, quiches and other nice things. When I’ve asked here in LA about what they do with the produce that’s still good but not pretty enough to sell they told me they toss it. They don’t want anyone getting it free then suing them if it’s rotten and they get sick. I think that policy has changed now.
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on August 30, 2020 at 4:30 pm
To Basset, and Sherri’s reference, I’d say the question is “but why get high?” And one of the things that’s changed my viewpoint on some of these things is learning that there are a remarkable number of long-term high-functioning addicts . . . just as there are long-term high-functioning drinkers who live on the bubble between diagnosably alcoholic and those maybe drinking more than is good for them. Drinking, almost everyone concedes, is complex. Okay then, and so (it turns out) is substance use and abuse. If you come home and eat a quart of high fat, supersweet ice cream every blessed night, to the exclusion of other activities, and to your overall health detriment, you’ve got an issue. Call it addiction? I could outline the same with shopping or, God forgive me, churchgoing. Almost anything can be the focus of addictive/compulsive behaviors.
Why have certain substances gotten the associations and legal status they do? It turns out there’s a history to that, and it’s very tightly entwined with racism. I could go on . . .
But as to Sherri’s later comment, like many Lincoln Project members (some of whom I know and have done work for), I have trouble knowing how to answer the question “am I a conservative?” I’ve long been the rogue conservative in this community, active in issues that are considered the preserve of bleeding heart liberals, and my liberal friends sometimes startle when I check the box at a board meeting for “previous military service” (one I gave grief to when she said for about the fifth time “I can’t believe you were a Marine” and I pointed out this was an annual reminder). My role in housing and homelessness for the last thirty years gives me some leverage both with county Republicans and progressive groups alike, and that ability to cross boundaries has helped me get two children services levies passed and kept my batting average with school ballot issues above .500 — so I guess one answer is “I don’t know.” I like tradition, I prefer the familiar, I love history, even when it’s not attractive but if it’s revelatory, we need it. And I believe there is dimension to life beyond death, a faith perspective that often gets me seated at the conservative table whether that’s where I would have sat down or not.
Plus, I have said here before, that while I debated creationists as the token Christian anthropology student in college, and have long been more liberal than most of the Christian leaders in any community I’ve lived in, the fact is that when I need forty people to unload a Habitat truck on short notice, or feed an uncertain number tonight because the warming shelter plan fell through, I put out the call and it’s fundamentalists and Pentecostals who show up, in force, bearing hot dishes and tool belts. Not exclusively, but they are far and away reliably present when you need work done. So I like keeping those lines of communication open.
The last six months, those lines have been cut. And I’m unambiguously on the far side of the connection. Joe, if you’re reading this, I know you have been reading Nancy longer than any of us, and I know here you’ve been teasing and challenging, but you’ve gotten more unpleasant and pointlessly confrontative in the last couple of years. And that’s exactly what I grieve more generally. Lots of Joes in this community I used to be able to work with, who “jokingly” or seriously ask their challenging questions or nowadays just check to see if you’re wearing a mask, and if you fail the test, to the outer darkness with you. Blaming Trump is easy, but I fear it’s a deeper fracture than that broken record.
Am I conservative? Some days, yes, I’m pretty sure I am, at least a bit, but I know damn sure I’m anti-Trump seven days a week.
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David C said on August 30, 2020 at 5:01 pm
There was a time I would have missed Coozledad. I don’t know if he voluntarily left or was asked to leave but by that time he was pretty abusive.
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Joe Kobiela said on August 30, 2020 at 5:44 pm
Graduated in 1976 There was no draft and after graduation I went straight to the factory, worked the summer then tried college for a year knew it wasn’t for me so went back to the factory, learned to fly paying for it myself, tried to join the Air Force they wouldn’t let me fly due to no college degree and eyesight tried the army same thing so back to the factory, suffered thru layoffs but kept going back, didn’t fly for 17 yrs because I couldn’t afford it, in 1997 started flying again and again payed for my instrument, multi engine, flight instructor, multi engine flight Instructor, commercial, and airline transport pilot out of my own pocket. I then started building hours by working third shift getting home, sleeping a few hours then flying skydivers, instructing, or jumping on check runs that got me a few hours of multi time after which my wife would drive down to Baer field pick me up and eat dinner driving back to Auburn to turn around and go back to Dana. I would hardly call it lucky, more along the lines of my family, especially my wife sacrificing for me. After 31 years I took a leap of faith and retired to fly freight, single pilot thru all sorts of weather mostly at night for 10 years till I got my present job. Lucky? More like hard work.
So no I didn’t serve, but dad was 82nd airborne, and his brother was 101st, niece just retired as a Lt.Colonel, I have total respect for the military especially those that have been in combat and hope we never see another war. But realize we need a strong military to protect us.
Pilot Joe
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john (not mccain) said on August 30, 2020 at 5:46 pm
Desperately poor people or people in abusive situations or other extreme circumstances they can’t easily or quickly get out of want to stop caring about that they are in those situations. It’s not the only reason people take drugs, but making people not care about what’s happening to them is something drugs are very good at. Any port in a storm.
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Sherri said on August 30, 2020 at 6:09 pm
Substances of abuse are maladaptive coping mechanisms. Some are more societally acceptable than others. Some allow for better functioning than others.
Being a little drunk felt better than being sober, especially in certain situations. It became more and more difficult to walk that fine line over time, until eventually, it just felt shitty drunk or sober. Is that wanting to be high? No, I don’t think so. I think it was never learning how to be comfortable with who I was until after getting sober and going through years of therapy. I also think that being a functional alcoholic probably kept me going through a period of my life when therapy wasn’t an option.
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David C said on August 30, 2020 at 6:22 pm
Both luck and hard work can be true at the same time, Joe. You were born to good parents in the first world, you married a good woman who supported your dream. If you’re still in contact with the people you went to high school with, I’m sure you can say that some who worked harder than or equal to you were less successful and some who were quite lazy did well. Something as simple as poor eyesight could have prevented your dream from coming true. Maybe if it had you would have found something equally as satisfying to you. But maybe you wouldn’t have. A simple twist of fate could have derailed all of us or sent us to the heights. There’s no accounting for it.
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Mark P said on August 30, 2020 at 7:03 pm
My father was in the 104th Infantry in WW II, but I still can’t buy aspirin at the base exchange.
Hard work can sometimes get you where you want to be, if all the pieces fall into place. Other times hard work gets you calluses, back problems and lung disease.
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Jim said on August 30, 2020 at 7:29 pm
Joe: thanks for the answer. My father, a grandfather as well all my uncles (except the one with profound hearing loss) and great uncles all served.
I always appreciate success through hard work. However, I believe that even though my family worked in factories and had little education that I am profoundly lucky to have had their examples and support to get where I am today.
I think you and I have profoundly different beliefs regarding the good intentions and truthfulness of authorities, particularly Republicans.
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Peter said on August 30, 2020 at 7:55 pm
Boy, I don’t check on this site for a couple of days and all hell breaks loose? If you guys keep this up I’ll be taking names!
Well, maybe this will cheer you up – my son is a returning election judge, and yesterday the county had their training session. He said you could tell who the Republican judges were – they either had Trump Pence masks on (oh the irony!) or no masks at all. And some were smoking. Indoors.
The lead instructor said that today’s not a problem, but you can’t wear those masks on election day – that’s politicking, and you have to keep it neutral. My son said half a dozen would be judges left – a couple of them screaming at the instructor about their rights.
My son said he understands that some retirees are election judges because the alternative is to sit at home and wait to die, but why spend the time driving to a high school gym, waiting a couple of hours for the class to start, and then walking out because you’re told you can’t wear a political mask when you’re supposed to be a non-partisan judge on election day? Why bother showing up in the first place if that’s how you’re going to act?
Pilot Joe, I do have to say this: There certainly have been a lot of civil unrest these days, and a lot of stores have been needlessly ransacked and destroyed. I think you’re old enough to remember the late ’60’s – I think a lot of people on this site remember them. The amount of destruction and looting going on now is a tiny fraction of what happened then. I’ll leave it at that.
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Joe Kobiela said on August 30, 2020 at 8:05 pm
Jim,
Thanks for being civil, I have always believed everyone has a right to their opinion, I respect yours even though I disagree with them, to bad others here don’t feel the same way.
Pilot Joe
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LAMary said on August 30, 2020 at 9:17 pm
A nice inexpensive knock off.
https://mintandlily.com/products/the-vote-necklace?variant=31767379476553
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Deborah said on August 30, 2020 at 9:19 pm
I do believe in listening to people with different opinions but when those opinions drastically effect my daughter’s profound pre-existing condition, I take umbrage. I say when your politics take her health care away, fuck you. Period.
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Deborah said on August 30, 2020 at 9:48 pm
Brandon, yes I remember Hattie as well, miss her, and White Beard, Ashley (a little before my time here but I’ve heard so much about him) I’m probably forgetting someone else in the moment, don’t mean to.
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Heather said on August 30, 2020 at 9:56 pm
I have zero time for boomers who are clueless or refuse to recognize how much more difficult it is to afford an education or make a decent living these days, especially if you don’t have a college degree.
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Joe Kobiela said on August 30, 2020 at 10:09 pm
Debrah thanks for proving my point.
Heather look into a trade school, electricians, plumbers, welders, cnc operator’s, all are high paying in demand jobs.
Pilot Joe
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Heather said on August 30, 2020 at 11:21 pm
More support for trade schools has been proposed as a solution to the income gap, and some jobs can be well-paying, but that still doesn’t account for the fact that real wages for Americans haven’t budged in 40 years, but costs for almost everything sure have. So you can’t really compare your earning power over your lifespan with someone joining the job market today. Hell, even I can’t afford a house in Chicago.
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us-workers-real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/
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Jakash said on August 31, 2020 at 12:58 am
I see that you appreciate civility when you’re on the receiving end, Joe. Granted, there have been some mean comments directed at you, but you’re not above offering shots of your own when you’re so inclined.
But we’re all just freaking blog commenters shooting the breeze. The person who is the least civil person, publicly, in American government is the guy you support. “Crooked Hillary” “Lying Ted” “Sleepy Joe” “Pocahontas” … on and on, and those are just the nicknames. Outside of a grade school, I can’t remember a person who cares less about civility than your guy. And, he’s, you know, the President of the United States, not a blog commenter. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a president who didn’t embarrass himself, and the nation he represents, almost every day with his childish behavior? Really?
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Sherri said on August 31, 2020 at 1:43 am
Sounds like Mrs. PJ sacrificed quite a bit to allow you to pursue your dreams. Has she ever been given the chance to pursue her dreams, or did those get set aside to raise the kids and support you?
Not saying that’s a bad thing, just observing.
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Dexter Friend said on August 31, 2020 at 2:51 am
Ashley Morris was sensational. Any phony pol would become a fucking fuckmook; he celebrated New Orleans with great fervor and gave hell to anyone who was an asshole of any degree. I honestly thought it was a bit when we found out he had died…nope: reality.
Whitebeard was a kind soul , living way up there in an ancient house. He was a critical newspaper writer and in time changed his topics from car racing to just about everything.
Prospero (MJ) was off-beat and went off with streams of shittyped rhetoric that we laughed at or just wondered “what the hell, anyway?”
Moe was very popular and Maggie J. was praised as a great writer. Yeah, we have lost friends, but not at the rate of my friends at a blog where recovering drunks hung out. I joined about 2007, and in 11 years, over half the 25 or so recovering alkies were dead. Most of the lost ones suffered slow deaths from various cancers. Too small a sample to say heavy drinking over years promotes early death , maybe 20 years or more later.
It was interesting reading comments here about drug addiction being an escape more than a physical need. I just watched the great 1957 movie “A Hatful of Rain”, with Eva Marie Saint, Lloyd Nolan, Don Murray, and Tony Franciosa , about a Korean War soldier coming home addicted to opiates he had gotten in army and VA hospitals. I watched that when I was 15 and swore to myself if I ever found myself in a situation like that, I’d never take opiates. A mere 6 years later, one of my several duties was running a drug rehab ward in Nha Trang, with no training whatsoever. I played it by ear and handed out Mellaril tabs. In Vietnam, 97% pure heroin was everywhere, and cheap. Not once did I try it…my promise. You would not believe what that shit does to a person after a short-time usage period. Shitting yourself is a mild one, for example.
I don’t judge anyone of age by yes/no on military service. I was drafted; no fucking way would I have volunteered to go to Vietnam as a soldier; I was calling radio shows in 38 states (AM flamethrower 50,000 watt stations in the midwest covered 38 states) then, at age 15, voicing my opinion about The Gulf of Tonkin fiasco to American presence there being genocide, and ill conceived. And then, there was, after the draft ended, what we called the economic draft…that was the recruiters convincing dead-end young men and women to leave places that had no future for them, and the military at least paid them and fed them and in many cases really did turn boys and girls into women and men.
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lisa said on August 31, 2020 at 3:58 am
In my Ohio city, there are Trump signs everywhere. I bought a Biden/Harris sign and two days later, someone took it from my front yard. I have a Little Library in my front yard and they also ripped the entire door off of it. Assholes, everywhere.
We have a couple really nice and well maintained dog parks here. We took our two Beagles to visit them quite often. Then owners would bring their pit bulls to the enclosure and every time those dogs got very aggressive with all other dogs. A few times the owners of the pits would also get dicey and want to start an argument. Before one of our dogs got hurt, we just stopped going which is a shame.
I’m surrounded at work and with all members of my extended family by Trump lovers. Only my husband (and myself) hates him. It’s exhausting.
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Mark P said on August 31, 2020 at 9:03 am
Lisa — Same here in Georgia, surrounded by Trump supporters. My young (51) friend in Littleton, CO, finds herself in the same situation. It’s hard.
And I honestly believe that the Trump camp has far more than its share of deplorables. So, so many of them are just bad people.
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jcburns said on August 31, 2020 at 9:05 am
Joe, glad to hear you respect civility. Might I civilly suggest you work a bit on empathy. As a guy about your age (probably older), I know that the equations have changed—dramatically—and it is much much harder to earn a decent living starting out. It’s hard for us to see from the vantage point of being further down the road, but it’s really important that we do see it and acknowledge it. It is a way of having the deck stacked against you. I think we’re now (as a country) rising up and saying that where we can, we need to de-stack the deck. Level up the playing field. Pick your metaphor. You might say “well, we all had to struggle”, but some have had to struggle more than others, always, and nowadays the percentage of the struggling is larger and the difference they have to overcome is larger. That’s not healthy. We have a healthier society when that difference is less and there are fewer in the deck-stacked-against-them class.
We can work for a healthier society without that struggle being labeled “socialism” or any of that other crap. Healthier is good.
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LAMary said on August 31, 2020 at 9:53 pm
Heather, I’m a boomer and I understand where you’re coming from. I have two sons who are out of work other than a crappy food delivery job for one of them. I have no idea what they’re going to do when this is over, and neither do they. Even without the pandemic, the cost of college is crazy now, and here in LA only people with a health six figure income can buy something. So I’m definitely sympathetic. It’s crazy out there. And Joe? pensions are virtually unknown these days. I hope you realize that.
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LAMary said on August 31, 2020 at 9:54 pm
Heather, I’m a boomer and I understand where you’re coming from. I have two sons who are out of work other than a crappy food delivery job for one of them. I have no idea what they’re going to do when this is over, and neither do they. Even without the pandemic, the cost of college is crazy now, and here in LA only people with a health six figure income can buy something. So I’m definitely sympathetic. It’s crazy out there. And Joe, you do know that pensions are virtually non existent these days.
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