Current affairs chapping my butt.

I was at a friend’s house Saturday, and as we paddled around in her backyard pool — been doing a lot of swimming this summer — she confessed that she’d mostly given up social media. She’s already someone who pays only glancing attention to the news, and said Instagram was eating her alive, so she just…gave it up. (Mostly.)

I’m starting to see the utility of that. The more Elon Musk screws up Twitter, which could be infuriating but was still mostly entertaining, the easier it seems. I’m not ready to go all the way yet, but hell, maybe I’ll do a few tests fasts or diets or something. See if I can find the good in my fellow man again.

Who am I kidding. There is no good in these dipshits.

That’s the WashPost (gift link), on its millionth Cletus safari of the modern era, circulates through the crowds at an Iowa county fair and learns — YET AGAIN — that nope, they’re still down with the clown:

During a hot, sunny weekend at the Boone County Fair — where hundreds of Iowans came together to eat funnel cakes and corn dogs and to watch their children and grandchildren show off animals from their family farms — the range of Republican voters’ views on Trump, the undisputed front-runner in state and national polls, was on full display. Interviews with GOP voters in the rural county, which Trump carried by double-digit percentage points in 2016 and 2020, show that Trump continues to have a tight grip on the party, even among those who have grown weary of his rhetoric and legal troubles.

…(Vickie) Farmer has been a Trump supporter from the start, but in the years since Biden came into office, her support for the former president has only grown. She said she’s most worried about the economy, because she sees her adult children living paycheck to paycheck and at times struggling to juggle food and gas costs.

“I was very happy with the way things were going. I don’t think he is guilty of nearly all of the things they’re accusing him of,” she said, sitting next to a table she set up with her husband to sell scented wax melts and other home goods. “I think there’s a smear campaign to try to keep him from getting into office.”

Oh, fuck off, Vickie. If you’re dumb enough to believe that returning a psychopathic felon to office will free your children from wage slavery, you’re really too dumb to vote at all.

The point of this story is that in this vast crowd of Iowans, there were a few who confessed to being “sick of the drama,” but will probably vote for him if he’s the nominee, and to these good Germans I say fuck off as well.

In other oh-eff-off news today, there’s this:

Joy Alonzo, a respected opioid expert, was in a panic.

The Texas A&M University professor had just returned home from giving a routine lecture on the opioid crisis at the University of Texas Medical Branch in March when she learned a student had accused her of disparaging Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick during the talk.

In the few hours it took to drive from Galveston, the complaint had made its way to her supervisors, and Alonzo’s job was suddenly at risk.

Don’t you just hate left-wing political correctness? Oh, wait, this isn’t it?

And the thing is, no one can even say what it is she said that was “disparaging” of the lieutenant governor. Other students can’t remember anything. But one little informant in the crowd disapproved and called her mommy.

For free speech advocates, health experts and students, Texas A&M’s investigation of Alonzo was a shocking demonstration of how quickly university leaders allow politicians to interfere in classroom discussions on topics in which they are not experts — and another example of increasing political involvement from state leaders in how Texas universities are managed.

You don’t say. And this overheated hellhole is where Americans are flocking? No thanks.

Other than that? It hasn’t been a terrible week so far. Nice swim this morning, not too punishingly hot in the afternoon. But I’m crawling to that hump, and will be very happy to see the weekend, when Kate and I will see “Barbie.”

How about you?

Posted at 6:51 pm in Current events |
 

56 responses to “Current affairs chapping my butt.”

  1. Will said on July 25, 2023 at 7:36 pm

    ‘And the thing is, no one can even say what it is she said that was “disparaging” of the lieutenant governor. Other students can’t remember anything.’

    This reminds me of the Texas A&M president who had to resign recently over the disgrace of hiring someone who believes in diversity.

    It’s the Khmer Rouge, American style.

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  2. Jeff Borden said on July 25, 2023 at 7:53 pm

    I’m mildly amazed the average tRumpanzee doesn’t drown from looking up during a rain storm. FD Chief speaks for me. I’m sick of those assholes and their slavish devotion to a moron. Just avoid them…especially where they’re most heavily congregated.

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  3. Julie Robinson said on July 25, 2023 at 8:13 pm

    Welp. I was born in Boone, but since my folks moved the following year I take no responsibility. Really, outside Iowa City and its liberal arts university, there are few places of tolerance in the state. Cedar Rapids’ Kennedy High School still puts on controversial shows like Bat Boy and Chicago, which gives me some hope. But the people quoted in the story are like most of my relatives. Good Germans too.

    I’m only on Facebook and Instagram, and outside of my curated friends I mostly follow Broadway actors. They’re generally a good antidote to the rest of the dreck.

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  4. alex said on July 25, 2023 at 8:14 pm

    Surprised that lazy Cletus safari journalist didn’t probe harder about the cushy jobs Vickie’s children lost when Biden tanked the economy and redistributed their wealth.

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  5. Jeff Gill said on July 25, 2023 at 9:17 pm

    So I got curious, suspecting our host can’t copyright “Cletus safari” and thinking it goes back to Gin and Tacos, but I find it seems to have a longer history. Got to Nov. 2017 on Deadspin, with a Twitter link that’s to a live account but a dead tweet:

    https://deadspin.com/the-politico-goes-on-a-cletus-safari-finds-two-angry-n-1820254886

    Mildly curious where/who the term began . . .

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  6. Sherri said on July 25, 2023 at 9:37 pm

    At least we don’t have to hear about how Musk is a super-genius anymore. And he’s not eligible to run for president.

    More good news! UPS avoided a strike with its drivers, by apparently making a reasonable contract deal! I didn’t know US corporations could do that anymore.

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  7. Mark P said on July 26, 2023 at 1:03 am

    Breaking news from the Washington Post! Trump supporters are still morons!

    In other news, the Post says astronomers believe that the Sun will rise tomorrow, and top mathematicians say two plus two equals four.

    What would we do without the Post’s hard-hitting, original journalism?

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  8. Dexter Friend said on July 26, 2023 at 4:59 am

    I wouldn’t know how to live if I just glanced at the news once in a while. Even as a school boy before running out the door at home, I’d tune my transistor radio in to the NBC newscast. I have been following the Netanyahu power grab with much disdain and disgust, and although I am a Biden guy, he never should have had that asshole in the White House recently when all Netanyahu wants to do is become king of Israel and just dominate the Palestinians with overwhelming settlement construction and bypass and weaken the Supreme Court there so he would have no Knesset checkoffs to his supreme command that he wants. Worldwide, not just here in the USA, reactionaries are trying to establish right wing harshness onto their people. A few years ago a fellow blogger on another platform called me out as “anti-Semitic” for criticizing Netanyahu. Ha! Hey, those thousands of protestors in Jerusalem are ALL Jews, and they have quite enough of Netanyahu and his goddam right wing sycophants behind him.
    By now, it’s clear that Trump will be the candidate , even if he’s headed for prison. I want him in prison as I believe he is guilty of all he’s being charged with, plus in civil court, he’s a convicted rapist, for crissake.
    That GOP, have they ever tried to tear down the nation, with Reagan a lying crazed man whose economic policies hurt so many millions of working people and tried to have a space shield built…and then of course we had a bona fide idiot starting up his daddy’s war again by blaming Iraq for 9-11. George Bush was re-elected. So we knew where the country stood. I was all for Obama, of course nobody agrees with a President on everything, but I wished he could just stay on like FDR did. And then, and now again…this Trump character. But Father Time betrays us all, sooner or later, hope it’s not later, as the lyric finished. We can’t have Trump back in the Oval. No.

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  9. Jim said on July 26, 2023 at 5:32 am

    As long as Baldy stays in the spotlight …………

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  10. Jeff Gill said on July 26, 2023 at 7:12 am

    DeSantis tells his supporters how to talk about his reset, explaining they will “pump the breaks.” Also, it’s either home in, or hone down; pick your metaphor, buddy.

    https://twitter.com/bencjacobs/status/1683919024252387333

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  11. Dave said on July 26, 2023 at 8:00 am

    “Pump the breaks”. They can’t even get that right. Other than social issues and examples of what he’s done to education in Florida, he has no issues. “Pump the breaks”, might be an example of what results from education available in Florida.

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  12. David C said on July 26, 2023 at 9:34 am

    Those are the breaks, I guess.

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  13. Jason T. said on July 26, 2023 at 9:41 am

    Regarding the people quoted in that Washington Post story, all I can think of is the speech that the Waco Kid (Gene Wilder) makes to Bart (Cleavon Little) in “Blazing Saddles”:

    What did you expect? “Welcome, sonny”? “Make yourself at home”? “Marry my daughter”? You’ve got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know … morons.

    All of this stems from Obama’s election. Remember, the Tea Party was launched in response to Obama supposedly “raising taxes” (wink, wink, nudge, nudge, AND HE WAS BLACK) and it was a straight line from the Tea Party to Trump.

    At least in the movie, Bart eventually won over the white racists in the small rural town. But real life ain’t the movies.

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  14. Julie Robinson said on July 26, 2023 at 10:07 am

    JeffG, others can weigh in, but I think hone in is the most-used form of that phrase. Breaks instead of brakes is a typical millennial error, made by someone who doesn’t normally spell out words but would text br8ks on their phone.

    Yesterday our paper had a story that two of DeSantis’ biggest (billionaire) supporters are having second thoughts and looking at other candidates. Both mention his abortion stance and one also mentions his inane remarks about Russia invading Ukraine being a good thing. So there’s that.

    And there’s this, an ad made by a staffer, since withdrawn, staffer fired, but dog whistles duly tweeted: https://twitter.com/AlexThomp/status/1683961998608924672?s=20. It’s scary and bizarre, with a chilling smoker face popping up over it and a Nazi symbol, the Sonnenrad, at the end. Just in case anyone had any doubts.

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  15. Icarus said on July 26, 2023 at 10:21 am

    Man, is it really that hard to go through life not saying anything stupid about slavery or the Holocaust?

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  16. Jason T. said on July 26, 2023 at 12:14 pm

    Julie R. @ 14: It also shows stormtroopers in kepi hats marching toward the horizon.

    Y’know, Republican candidates have the worst luck these days with their staff members accidentally quoting Nazis and accidentally using Nazi imagery without the candidates having any knowledge of it. It’s amazing how it just keeps happening, over and over, by dumb luck.

    Just like it’s amazing how Jason Aldean accidentally put out a video full of references to lynching Black people. An amazing coincidence.

    Also, did anyone see that turnip truck I fell from?

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  17. Julie Robinson said on July 26, 2023 at 2:11 pm

    Also coincidental that Aldean’s video is set in front of where a real lynching occurred. Hum.

    I don’t know what all the imagery in the DeSantis ad is and not willing to research it. Our son wasn’t sure about the weird smoker. I’m sure the *right* people know.

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  18. Suzanne said on July 26, 2023 at 3:50 pm

    That DeSantis video is bizarre, to say the least, and looks like something made by a high schooler. As you say, Icarus, how hard is it for people to not say something positive about slavery or Nazism? Pretty hard for some people.

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  19. Sherri said on July 26, 2023 at 4:15 pm

    Isn’t it funny how Effective Altruists never seem interested in preventing the apocalypse, but they are very interested in making sure they and their merry band of fellow EAs survive the apocalypse. Almost like they’re less interested in saving humanity and more interested in remaking humanity in their own image…

    https://qz.com/sam-bankman-fried-ftx-nauru-court-case-money-laundering-1850662899

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  20. Little Bird said on July 26, 2023 at 6:23 pm

    Sinead O’Connor has died. She was incredibly controversial, and had the best voice. I’ve been tearing up all afternoon since I read about her death. She was only 56.

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  21. Dexter Friend said on July 27, 2023 at 3:07 am

    I praise a government organization , the Veterans Administration, then they cut my legs out from under me: Denied, denied, denied, denied…4 cases rated at 0% for disability. Don’t feel sorry for me, see…my local vet-rep had filled my head with visions of sugar plums and approval. He was just wrong, boy was he ever. So life just goes on, steady as she goes. All’s well here, but I know this kind of news can really distress some people.
    I didn’t drink over it.

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  22. ROGirl said on July 27, 2023 at 9:17 am

    Another storm, another power outage. Restoration is supposed to be Saturday, but maybe they will get to it tomorrow. Someone at work was telling me about a solar generator, I’m going to look into it.

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  23. Jenine said on July 27, 2023 at 11:32 am

    @Dexter – yes, do carry on. My dad had many a wrangle with the VA so I know that you need to have the thickest skin.

    @Little Bird, I’m the same age and have been feeling sad about her death as well. Here’s a video I hadn’t seen before, with Terry Hall, All Kinds of Everything

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  24. Scout said on July 27, 2023 at 3:26 pm

    WE FINALLY GOT A MONSOON!!! Wind, dust, thunder, lightning and then a blessed hour of torrential rain. I feel so much better now.

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  25. alex said on July 27, 2023 at 6:41 pm

    We’re getting our turn with the heat wave after a relatively cool summer so far.

    And the contractor drama continues. They haven’t contacted me yet about the final walkthrough. They had someone call me earlier in the week to ask if I was satisfied and I very politely but firmly indicated that I was not. Aside from the ventilation SNAFU, which has been remedied, they neglected to straighten out the swayback ridgeline and bowed decking that I had been promised would be fixed. This same firm fixed those same problems on our adjacent rental house just a few weeks previously, so I’m not buying the foreman’s story that this couldn’t be fixed. No more than I believed his story that one entire side of my house would be just fine without ventilation. He just didn’t fucking want to do the work. They made him come back by himself and put the ventilation in and he had to remove and replace three rows of shingles in order to do it.

    I haven’t paid them their balance of more than $16K. And I still need to inspect a spot in the attic where I was told some work was done but I don’t believe it. I want to make sure before I call them out on that too.

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  26. Deborah said on July 27, 2023 at 6:52 pm

    Lucky you, Scout, you guys deserve it. We have been having a bit of rain here and there in Northern New Mexico, but no monsoon downpours unfortunately. Although downpours will cause floods because of the fires early summer, last year (or was it the year before?). The land in the fire areas is a mess still.

    After today temps go down a bit, to the upper 80s, hopefully done with the 90s for a while for the foreseeable future.

    We’re still on our house/pet sitting gig (with no pay of course because we’re good neighbors). We have 2 more long weeks to go. The daughter of the neighbors must have the baby today, she’s 2 weeks late and she’s 40 and this is her first, so she’ll have a C-section if the 2nd inducement doesn’t work. It has been a saga for the neighbors, I feel for them. But I’ll be sooooo glad when it’s over for us. We have been taking turns spending time back at the condo in Santa Fe to give each other a break for a while. I’m still worried that the neighbors will want to stay longer because the child’s birth is so late. My husband swears he’s going to say no (he’s the one who set the whole thing up to begin with), but he’ll probably back down when push comes to shove.

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  27. FDChief said on July 28, 2023 at 9:02 am

    Re: “Vickie” and her assorted Trump-chumps’ assertions that Tubby-time was The Bestest Presidenting Evah;

    I’ve been an adult civilian since about 1988. So Reagan-Bush1-Clinton-Bush2-Obama-Tubby-Biden. Through that time I’ve been consistently middle-class, straight, white, and male.

    And none – ZERO – of the reigns of those different people made anything more than a trivial-to-the-point-of-insignificance change in my life or the lives of anyone around me…except Tubby.

    No physical changes (tho had I been called up for Dick-n-Dubya’s Awesome Middle East Adventure I’d be singing a different tune…)

    Nothing financial other than some nervous moments after 2008.

    And nothing social – except COVID under Tubby. Which is entirely ON Tubby, for lying and hiding and talking ignorant smack about drinking bleach and shoving a lightbulb up your ass.

    I’m damn dead certain that the other people in my cadre were no more affected than I was by real life. So, sorry, Vickie. I call bullshit. The horrors inside your head caused by the thoughts of gay men kissing? Those don’t count, so fuck your lying ass sideways.

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  28. LAMary said on July 28, 2023 at 9:31 am

    What FD Chief said. I will add that seeing so many people buying into the orange slime’s bullshit has been depressing.

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  29. FDChief said on July 28, 2023 at 12:13 pm

    Let’s not let the newsies off the hook, either. There’s no reason to platform the Vickies unless it’s to mock, shame, deride, or label them the liars they are. To give this nimrod a microphone is to help her infect the public with her ignorant lying bullshit.

    The unwillingness of the media to step so much as a micrometer away from their “Both Sides Are Radical!” fraud is a huge factor in helping the Vickies and all the other QANut Republicans.

    It’d just be annoying if it wasn’t that it also helps these loons elide the existential climate crisis. Which is shaping up to be an Extinction-Event-level problem, and proving that as a species we are supremely incompetent at responding to a slow-rolling problem that requires even the slightest inconvenient group action.

    You want problems, Vicky? They’re coming right at you, they have absofuckingloutley nothing to do with CRT or woke trans Bud Light, and they’re going to fuck you and those precious kiddies’ lives up in ways your beautiful mind can’t begin to comprehend.

    And you and millions like you are the reason they’re going to fuck my kids’ lives up too…for which I’d happily see you and yours in Hell.

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  30. Jeff Gill said on July 28, 2023 at 3:58 pm

    In regards to inflation, through the first half of 2023, I’d seen a couple of comparisons, so I went looking for a bunch of them, and the results were interesting:

    Argentina: 116%
    Turkey: 38.2%
    Hungary: 21.9%
    Sweden: 9.7%
    Austria: 9%
    United Kingdom: 8.7%
    Italy: 8%
    Australia: 7%
    Germany: 6.4%
    Norway: 6.4%
    South Africa: 6.3%
    Netherlands: 5.7%
    Mexico: 5.06%
    Finland: 5%
    Israel: 4.6%
    France: 4.5%
    Canada: 3.4%
    Japan: 3.2%
    United States: 2.97%

    Now, there are some countries with a lower inflation rate than us in Jan-June of 2023:
    =========
    Indonesia: 2.66%
    Russia: 2.5%
    Denmark: 2.5%
    Spain: 1.9%
    Greece: 1.8%
    China: 0.6%

    Denmark, Spain, & Greece might make interesting places to live; China infamously has unreliable financial reporting, and there’s little confidence in their numbers. Russia is, well, Russia, so who knows but I don’t care. Indonesia? Nope.

    The point being that inflation is basically up, fairly drastically, all over, with COVID still driving some of the economic issues in reverberations of labor force changes and supply chain issues, and then there’s that whole special military operation out of Russia into Ukraine which has rattled markets all over the place.

    US inflation really couldn’t be driven down by more drilling for oil or adding pipelines or eliminating DEI offices in every corporation. Won’t work. I’m sure federal cash payments had an effect, but we weren’t the only ones; the idea that the last tranche of COVID recovery checks both torqued employment numbers and launched spending in a counterproductive way (I lose track of what the “it’s Biden’s fault we have inflation” arguments are saying most recently) is undermined by the fact that most Western democratic free market governments did the same.

    Hope this is of use to someone. I just sit here in odd moments and look stuff up online.

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  31. David C said on July 28, 2023 at 4:51 pm

    Without the Federal payments, student loan pause, enhanced unemployment, and so forth, we probably would have had deflation which would have been worse than the inflation we had. The seeds of the inflation were planted thirty or forty years ago when business decided it would be a great idea to fire everyone and send production to a dictatorship six thousand miles away. What could possibly go wrong.

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  32. Jeff Borden said on July 28, 2023 at 5:34 pm

    Vicky is a real dumbass, all right, but then so is everyone who has cast their lot with the walrus in a polo shirt. BTW, there’s a story out today how tRumpanistas are planning to gut environmental protections and repeal all of Biden’s green initiatives if the orange cancer slithers back into the White House. This would delight dumbass Vicky, of course, who deserves to feel the weight of her ignorance as she watches rural Iowa dry up and blow away as climate change turns all that rich topsoil into a Dust Bowl redux. Unfortunately, the non-stupid among us will suffer, too.

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  33. Icarus said on July 28, 2023 at 6:00 pm

    A person I’m friends with on FB but cannot recall if I ever met IRL posted

    Portillo’s – 2 Beefs $18.68 I think too much!

    one of his friends posted: Bidenomics

    Not being able to stay in my lane, I replied:

    please explain how the president of the United States of America controls or influences the price of a roast beef sandwich.
    Please show your work.

    naturally, he called me an idiot. we exchanged some stupid remarks and then his right-wing boyfriend chimed in with:

    On his first day in office Biden spiked the price of oil. Secondly, he has paid cash in lieu of a child tax credit. Last he printed money and flushed the economy creating hyper inflation.

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  34. alex said on July 28, 2023 at 7:13 pm

    All fast food is ridiculously overpriced anymore and now they try to guilt-trip you into tipping too. And a lot of them have you order at a kiosk that’s had everyone’s dirty fingers all over it.

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  35. basset said on July 29, 2023 at 9:20 am

    End of an era in the Royal Navy, 53 years ago Monday: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rum_ration

    I’ve seen times that a daily shot of rum would definitely improve. And according to the wiki, at one time US sailors were issued a gallon of beer a day.

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  36. LAMary said on July 29, 2023 at 9:48 am

    I toured a few of the ships in NYC during Fleet Week. The Germans and the Dutch had beer rations. This was in 1979 so who knows if that’s still the case.

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  37. David C said on July 29, 2023 at 11:17 am

    The beer on sailing ships was very weak. It had the minimum amount of alcohol and hops to prevent spoilage, of course, to save money. It also helped prevent scurvy.

    https://blog.library.si.edu/blog/2017/08/02/beer-board-age-sail/

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  38. David C said on July 29, 2023 at 12:52 pm

    Someone was either having us on or was fucking sick.

    https://edamurray.com/2018/10/01/ranking-best-mitch-albom-books/

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  39. Jeff Borden said on July 29, 2023 at 8:23 pm

    David C,
    You owe me 3 minutes of my life. LOL! What a crock of crap. Almost glorious in its blinkered view of Albom and his little world. A fun read if taken the right way.

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  40. Julie Robinson said on July 29, 2023 at 8:48 pm

    You can’t make this stuff up. Manatee dies after repeated sex with his brother: https://www.mysuncoast.com/2023/07/25/mote-marine-laboratory-releases-details-death-hugh-manatee/. Good grief.

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  41. Brandon said on July 30, 2023 at 1:39 am

    I might check out the Frankie Presto book sometime.

    Nancy, are you still doing the Week That Was podcast?

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  42. Dexter Friend said on July 30, 2023 at 4:01 am

    I deduce I am 18 years older than FD, so my worldview regarding history is different.
    Ronald Wilson Reagan made a significant difference in my life and my entire working class sister/brotherhood of workers who depended on the economy to continue working…the working class. No illusions we were middle class, for sure. We were introduced to trickle-down economics , a true farce which enriched only the ruling class and upper middle class.
    We were submitted to his lies as he declared total amnesia during the fiascos regarding Iran/Contras, he launched a land war against Grenada which had a total military force of 600 armed fighters. Reagan funded “freedom fighters” in Afghanistan, Angola, Nicaragua, and elsewhere in a mad plan to rid the world of anybody who wasn’t subservient to capitalism no matter what.
    His administration fought to cut back school lunches let alone the breakfasts which were not popular then.
    He fired ALL the goddam air traffic controllers , the action of only a mad, demented , vicious, hateful leader. I was in the UAW , not PATCO, but I marched with PATCO in Washington in September, 1981. What a together forceful group of air traffic controllers they were! They were screaming at Reagan across the mall inside the White House. Oh, yeah…and Richard Milhous Nixon sent me to Vietnam, too…so that changed my life a little…but if HHH had beaten Nixon, he’d have sent my generation of soldiers there too, and certainly in greater numbers. Humphrey was a hawk.

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  43. beb said on July 30, 2023 at 8:50 am

    There have been a couple of times where someone googled the names of people interviewed on one of these cletus safari’s and found that the so-called random stranger was a county chairman of the Republican party, or some such. Not a random person at all. It sounds to me like “Vickie” might be one such. It would also help if reporters made a point of calling him “The disgraced former president.”

    From what parts of the lyrics to that Jason Aldean song I’ve read he does not mention lynching, only that people in small towns have ways to treating bad people. Obviously vigilante justice. It was that the video was filmed in front of a courthouse where someone WAS lynched gives the game away. And I don’t know in what universe, small town or big city where one can get away with spiting on a cop or robbing a liquor store. He’s just building a straw man and setting it on fire.

    One of the problems President Biden will have running for re-election is that no one notices good governance, only the bad. He’s put money in the hands of poor people left and right, has been filling the courts with competent people with an emphasis on diversity and equality. And he’s spending on infrastructure and industrial policy. But the media is more interested in how Trump will get out of his latest indictment to mention anything Biden has done.

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  44. 4dbirds said on July 30, 2023 at 9:49 am

    Call me crazy but I want Trump to win the nomination. It will galvanize the democratic base, keep moderates and republican lights voting against him and maybe that will help others down ticket. Also, when he loses the election, we might finally see him in jail.

    Dexter Friend, I am VA rated at 100%. I started at 30% over 30 years ago. Years of exposure to solvents, fuel, toxic fumes, ammunition depots, burn pits, back breaking physical labor, running in combat boots and medical care that was meant to keep me on duty instead of geared for my healing took its toll. I stayed at 30% until I stumbled upon a YouTube channel called Combat Craig. His series of how to deal with disability claims and how to get the highest rating possible was so much more valuable than any VA rep I had. I received 100% rating in less than a year after following his advice. If you haven’t checked him out, I hope you do.

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  45. alex said on July 30, 2023 at 10:04 am

    One of the problems President Biden will have running for re-election is that no one notices good governance, only the bad.

    Brian Howey, an Indiana political writer, went out on a limb today. He usually has to kiss Republican ass to stay in the party’s good graces so he can maintain access to politicians, but today he wrote a column about economic reality under Biden and public misperception. Our state is benefitting tremendously from Bidenomics but you wouldn’t know it to talk to the average Hoosier. He closes by saying “‘Bringing home the bacon’ doesn’t mean what it used to.” If I were his editor I would have said “Bringing home the bacon counts for nothing when distortions and lies about your achievements are being served up as red meat.”

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  46. David C said on July 30, 2023 at 10:07 am

    I’m with you 4Dbirds. I know the nooz is going to pound hard on Joe Biden is old but I’d rather be defending that than Donald is a crooked, whiny-assed baby, rapist, stupid, traitor any old day.

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  47. 4dbirds said on July 30, 2023 at 10:17 am

    80 IS old. I wish we had someone younger but hey, their preferred candidate is not only old himself but he also overweight, and stupid. I don’t think anyone who is informed and not in a cult is going to vote for Trump. They will vote for Biden and hope he stays healthy.

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  48. David C said on July 30, 2023 at 10:42 am

    He sure is old but his health is much better than FDR’s was when he was elected to his final term and he was in his early 60s. Joe’s health is probably better than FDR’s was for his second or third elections. His health is certainly better than Cadet Bone Spur’s. Even if Joe does die in office President Harris will do just fine.

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  49. Mark P said on July 30, 2023 at 10:45 am

    If I win the lottery and the orange turd gets the Republican nomination, I will fund billboards and TV ads showing his photo and one word: RAPIST.

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  50. FDChief said on July 30, 2023 at 11:20 am

    Dexter: You’ll note my qualifiers, and they start out with “middle-class”.

    The GOP has beavered away making things shittier for everyone who does wage work for a living, and long before Ronnie Reagan – Taft-Hartley (shamefully passed under a Democrat…) was the beginning of walking the New Deal back. Reagan was the acellerant, yes, but it’s been a Republican project practically since the Thirties.

    But for the people in the professional/rentier class, like me?

    Nope. The death of union work, the financialization of the economy, the return of the Gilded Age? Just so much noise outside our comfortable windows.

    Which has a LOT to do with how it happened and why. We the comfortable middle – MLK’s “white moderates” – were fine with the GOP’s little feudalist project. We weren’t getting hurt.

    Well…turns out that we WERE…but it was because we were cooking our planet. But that’s a whole ‘nother nutroll.

    Doesn’t change that the Vickies and me were virtually unaffected by the way the political winds in Washington blew. We were fat, dumb, and happy until the culture warriors of the Age of Gingrich started getting Vicky’s panties in a twist about bullshit.

    So all she’s left with is dumb.

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  51. Icarus said on July 30, 2023 at 11:55 am

    The Barbie movie would have done alright with its target audience and just be part of some late-night show jokes if the right hadn’t got all bent about…something about it.

    the same with that Jason Aldean song. It got a boost it never would have because the Left (rightly so) called out its whistle-dog racism.

    If I had the talent, I would take the video and dub Miley Cyrus’ The Climb over it. heads would explode.

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  52. LAMary said on July 30, 2023 at 12:40 pm

    The hype for The Barbie Movie started a couple of months before release here on the local news. I was assuming it was a Disney product because the local ABC station was all over that movie and ABC is owned by Disney and they shamelessly hype all things related, even marginally, to Disney. On another note about the local ABC station the weather woman’s dresses seem to be getting tighter. The Fox station is trying to catch up.

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  53. Jeff Borden said on July 30, 2023 at 12:45 pm

    The logic of 4dbirds makes sense to me, but damn, what if the orange tumor won? The list of things that could happen between now and November 2024 is long and frightening: a. major terrorist attack, a Biden heart attack or stroke, an international incident with China or North Korea, a scandal within the administration, an economic hiccup.

    Any one of those could elevate the foul creature into the White House and, if that happens, we are fucked beyond all belief. His acolytes already are building out his second administration and its priorities, which beyond vengeance and retribution in the U.S. and renewed attacks on women, immigrants, LBGTQ, people of color, education and urbanites, would also include a complete reversal of environmental efforts, replacing civil service professionals with true believers, exiting NATO and other peace-keeping alliances, blank checks for Putin and other right-wing strongmen, etc. It’s horrifying to even contemplate.

    There are no new ideas in the QOP. . .just the usual anti-government drivel and slavish devotion to the donor class and the god botherers. Not one declared candidate is trustworthy. . .not one. Man, what a fucking mess.

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  54. David C said on July 30, 2023 at 12:54 pm

    Their plans for a second tRump administration are plug and play though. If any Republican became President they’d use it. Better the one with 50, 75, 100 or more charges hanging over him than Glenn Youngkin’s shit-eating grin, zip-up sweaters, and a barrel full of lies bamboozling people into thinking he’s some sort of moderate.

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  55. Deborah said on July 30, 2023 at 12:55 pm

    We’re going to see Oppenheimer on Friday, after not seeing it last Sunday. We’re still at the pet/house sit until Aug 12th, but we’re making lots of trips back to Santa Fe to get a break. My husband has said he’ll never commit to anything like that again, for that long. Allergies are of course becoming more and more of a problem, even though I’m vacuuming a lot and brushing the poor dog multiple times a day. I’m surprised the dog isn’t bald by now but every time I brush him I get gobs of handfuls of hair.

    The daughter of our neighbors finally had a baby boy, but even after all of this time waiting for it to be born, the kid doesn’t yet have a name, 3 or so days old now. Did I mention that the plan was for the kid to be born in a pool, in a tent outside? She’s over 40 and this is the first one so of course she ended up in a hospital and eventually had a C-section. There has been no mention thank goodness of the neighbors staying away longer since much of their time there got wasted waiting for the baby to be born. My husband swears he’ll say no to us sitting longer, and if he doesn’t say no, it’s all on him, allergies or no.

    Another thing I may have forgotten to mention is that when our neighbors got to their daughter’s house she had a dozen chickens living in one of her bathrooms. She has 4 dogs and a couple of cats and into that chaos comes a newborn baby. The baby daddy co-owns a vineyard a hundred miles away, so isn’t home many days. Yowsa, I can see how our neighbors would probably want to stay and help their daughter out longer, but they’ll have to get a different pet/house sitting plan for their own place. We’ll help them figure something out but it won’t be us staying there.

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  56. alex said on July 30, 2023 at 1:41 pm

    Great feature about the Snyderman House fire:

    https://www.wane.com/top-stories/suspicious-in-nature-sunday-marks-21-years-since-snyderman-house-fire-in-allen-county/

    Nancy has written about this in the past. It was a house designed by Michael Graves.

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