Father Michael.

There are people in your life who are entirely happy with things as they are, and bless ’em, that’s great. There are others who are happy but are still restless, still looking for the next thing, still focused on moving forward.

My friend Michael is one of those. And he’s had quite a journey so far. He attended a seminary high school, thinking he might become a priest, ended up a lawyer, married once, divorced, married again, worked with Coleman Young, served on the Wayne State Board of Governors, did this, did that, came out as gay, divorced again (but remained, and remains, BFFs with his ex-wife), etc. and added a lot more accomplishments and interesting turns to the journey. Let me put it this way: We met in a digital filmmaking class. That should tell you something.

And on Saturday, he did this:

Yep, Michael is now Father Michael, having prostrated himself before God and being ordained in the Cathedral Abbey of St. Anthony, home of the Ecumenical Catholic Church of Christ, informally known as independent, not Roman, Catholics. (Here’s a story about the church from 2016, and it’s pretty good.)

I was raised Catholic, but this was the only Mass of Ordination I’ve attended. There was a small choir that sounded much bigger, thanks to the operatic voices within; the leader had a basso like Paul Robeson. The homilies were personal and casual; I learned that Michael had been the straw buyer when the archdiocese refused to sell the closed church to the ecumenical bishop, among other things. But it was a joyful, moving occasion, and I’m so glad I went. And now I have a new place to donate clothing, something I’m overdue to get moving on.

Sunday was lovely, sunny and warm, so my friend Bill and I made what will almost certainly be my last trip of the year to St. Clair for some river swimming. The water was about 67 degrees — bracing for a pool swimmer, but as we told everyone who gaped in astonishment from the boardwalk, not bad at all once you got used to it. The current seemed stronger than usual, and the autumn light on the water as a cold front rolled in was stirring. We watched the Lee A. Tregurtha pass, upbound, from the water, and when we signaled for a salute, the pilot gave us one! Just a short toot, but it counted. That is one big ship. I just checked its location on Boatnerd, and it’s closing in on Drummond Island, headed for Marquette.

“This is a very Great Lakes kind of experience,” Bill remarked, and it certainly was.

And that, friends, is one reason we’re putting off our European trip until March/April of next year. So much happens in the fall around here. You don’t want to miss it.

Some bloggage? A little:

Headline: Anti-abortion activists worry they’re on the wrong end of a Faustian bargain. Ha ha ha ha ha, she chortled bitterly. Fuck you.

Ron DeSantis is a horrible, horrible person, who has destroyed a quirky public college in Florida, trying to make it into a southern Hillsdale. However, even Hillsdale has higher standards:

Gone are gender-neutral bathrooms, hallway art that in some cases featured nudity and student murals that had been completed in February and were expected to remain for several years. Student orientation leaders had to remove Black Lives Matter and Pride pins from their polo shirts. A student government election this week pitted a returning student against a new student backed by a newly formed campus chapter of the conservative organization Turning Point USA.

Dan Duprez, a former New College admissions officer, said he was troubled by the tactics used to grow the incoming class, noting that the grade-point averages and standardized test scores of new students were lower than those of past freshman classes. He recalled a colleague showing him an admissions essay that was a screenshot of cellphone notes, “riddled with incorrect spelling and grammar, saying, basically, ‘I just want to play ball.’”

Finally, here’s Vivek Ramaswamy, the only presidential candidate the Michigan GOP was able to lure to its biannual leadership conference on Mackinac Island, promising the moon and stars:

“How are we going to find our way out of this, to win the war that we are losing? First step we have to take on the managerial class,” he said. “As your next U.S. president, if you all put me there, we will shut down the unconstitutional fourth branch, 75% headcount reduction in the administrative state in Washington, D.C. Rescind unconstitutional federal regulations. That’s a majority of federal regulations on day one that we are done with.”

Promising that those unprecedented cuts would “unlock the U.S. economy,” Ramaswamy said they would also clear the way to fully embrace fossil fuels, despite the impact on climate change.

“When you get the administrative state out of the way, we will drill, we will frack, we will burn coal. We will embrace nuclear again in this country without apology. That is how we grow our economy,” he said.

Yeah, sure, he can totally do that. What a winner! Snort.

OK, then, let’s have ourselves a good week, eh? I’ll do my best.

Posted at 8:44 am in Current events, Detroit life |
 

63 responses to “Father Michael.”

  1. Jeff Borden said on September 25, 2023 at 10:06 am

    Oh, how terribly sad for the holy rollers. They embraced the devil and for what? The only good thing tRump may have done is to make the evangelicals look so horrible they’re bleeding younger members. Fuck ’em.

    Regarding little Vivek and that idiot from North Dakota and all the rest of the QOP panderers promising to mine, drill, dig and burn, how does that square with being pro-life? The fetus worshippers are always chanting about “the sanctity of life,” but aren’t they condemning future generations to a dystopian existence on a burning planet with poisoned waters and murky air? Where natural disasters are a nearly weekly event? Where extended droughts are reclaiming huge amounts of rich farmlands? Where the very availability of decent drinking water is already an issue in places like the American southwest?

    The hypocrisy is so damned galling.

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  2. susan said on September 25, 2023 at 10:08 am

    I thought for sure you were going to say on Saturday, your friend did shoot that guy dead next to the altar, and stood there admiring his work with some satisfaction.

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    • nancy said on September 25, 2023 at 10:39 am

      Yes, it does look that way. The slight tilt to the frame gives it that just-about-to-dive-for-cover look.

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  3. Mark P said on September 25, 2023 at 10:15 am

    An “independent voter” got angry when I said people who will blame Biden for things that are clearly Trump’s fault are stupid. So, it seems that if you want to fill a college for conservatives, you have to let the stupids in.

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  4. Mark P said on September 25, 2023 at 10:30 am

    Mark Liberman at Language Log weighs in on David Brooks’ latest bullshit, with some citations for earlier examples ( https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=19531
    ) . As we know, he’s been doing bullshit for a long time.

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  5. ROGirl said on September 25, 2023 at 10:50 am

    It looked like a dead body with a sheet over it to me, except his feet are facing the wrong direction.

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  6. Deborah said on September 25, 2023 at 11:05 am

    I went to the ordination of a Bishop in St. Louis many years ago, it was at the domed Basilica which is quite an impressive building with very ornate mosaics everywhere. I’ve never been Catholic but I found it all quite moving, the pomp and circumstance was something. The guy lying prostrate on the floor was both shocking and mesmerizing. I had designed some processional banners for the occasion, one of the managers of the architecture firm I worked for at the time was a member and I did the work pro bono. It was a very memorable spectacle, I will say.

    Vivek Ramaswamy doesn’t have a bats chance in hell of getting elected so what is he after? And what are his donors after?

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  7. alex said on September 25, 2023 at 11:10 am

    Mark P @ 3:

    LMFAO

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  8. Julie Robinson said on September 25, 2023 at 11:59 am

    Bless Father Michael for doing the hard work of reconciliation and service. I have attended quite a few ordinations and installations, though never in a Catholic church. So I’ve never seen someone fully prostate, only on bended knee. As a pastor’s mom, all I can think about is how dirty his alb is getting.

    Wait, now I see he’s on a rug. Well okay then.

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  9. Ann said on September 25, 2023 at 12:20 pm

    Sixty-seven degrees sounds not bad at all. We’re expecting a few days of temps in the mid-70s coming up and I’m tempted to get in one last Lake Superior swim. But I find it hard to imagine adding a current to the equation. My kids went to a summer camp on Neebish Island where they swam in the St. Mary’s as it flowed out of Lake Superior. I gather it was chilly.

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  10. Joe Kobiela said on September 25, 2023 at 12:41 pm

    Just read the history of your ship, quite interesting, she started out as a tanker in ww2 and has 2 battle stars. She has been lengthened twice.
    Cool boat.
    Pilot Joe

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  11. LAMary said on September 25, 2023 at 1:37 pm

    The Catholic chaplain at the hospital where I worked was Fr. Mark Ciccone. I asked him if he was related to Madonna and he said, “yes but she didn’t come to my ordination so she’s dead to me.”

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  12. ROGirl said on September 25, 2023 at 2:14 pm

    Yom Kippur, Hannukah, what’s the difference?
    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/sep/25/marjorie-taylor-greene-yom-kippur-hanukah-menorah?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

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  13. Mark P said on September 25, 2023 at 2:27 pm

    MTG’s song:

    Don’t know much about history

    Don’t know much biology

    Don’t know much about a science book

    Don’t know much about the French I took

    But I do know that I hate Jews

    And I know that if my friends do, too

    What a wonderful world this would be

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  14. Jason T. said on September 25, 2023 at 2:55 pm

    The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Detroit sounds like it’s still a might snippy about the sale of St. Anthony’s: Link

    In Pittsburgh, the Roman Catholic diocese has started demolishing vacant churches almost as soon as they’re closed, lest they be used for “profane” purposes (such as planting a breakaway congregation). “If we can’t have it, nobody can have it,” seems to be the guiding principle.

    Needless to say, the bishop then sticks the local parishes with the bills for demolishing their own churches. You can imagine how well that’s gone over.

    Church leaders make more atheists than Madalyn Murray O’Hair ever dreamed of.

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  15. Suzanne said on September 25, 2023 at 3:29 pm

    The ardent pro-lifers that I know are very naive about how conception works, how laws against abortion could turn ugly very quickly, and are blind to any nuance over the issue. It doesn’t surprise me at all that, to quote the article “if Trump ends up winning Iowa comfortably even after his remarks, it will be “very concerning” for the anti-abortion movement for one key reason: He’d “be revealing that we are bought, or sold out, to a personality.”” They see only the perceived nobility of saving fetuses and don’t go much beyond that. Those who lean more pro-choice already know the pro-lifers are easy fodder for a con-man like Trump.

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  16. Sherri said on September 25, 2023 at 5:29 pm

    As Brad DeLong points out here, since Gingrich, the Republicans, faced with the policy failures of the Reagan Revolution, have chosen time and again to ignore policy and instead heap scorn and fear on the opposition, to the point that Democrats are mortal enemies, not people you compromise with.

    https://open.substack.com/pub/braddelong/p/civic-friendship-the-baseline-requirement

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  17. Deborah said on September 25, 2023 at 6:12 pm

    Oh the hypocrisy. Kevin McCarthy thinks Menendez should resign (so do I) but he thinks George Santos is A-OK staying right where he is. But what else did we expect? Menendez’s wife seems like a piece of work, sort of a typical mob wife.

    Swimming in cold water does not appeal to me at all. Brrrrrrr.

    Related to the previous thread, I didn’t realize how interested in pottery I am until I noticed that every other Instagram post that pops up on my feed is about pottery. The algorithm has me pegged, I like to watch the process videos.

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  18. tajalli said on September 25, 2023 at 6:58 pm

    Bassett, much of what you contribute is quite interesting so cheer up. Unless I have a significant contribution, I try not to say anything. The absence of “like” or “thumbs up” buttons may result in an impression of indifference.

    I’m tending the computer fire of performing a total restoration of my desktop, which I’ve never had to do in the 15+ years of its life – very fortunate – so am on an adventure of sorts. About 3 hrs to go, as the crow flies. Then probably a round of diagnostics to root out the cause.

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  19. Jeff Gill said on September 25, 2023 at 7:38 pm

    Basset, if I could have a cosmic do over it would be to focus on ceramics over lithics in archaeology. Pot sherds tell cool stories!

    Sherri, that’s my joy & delight come true last Tuesday. World Heritage List inscription for the Newark Earthworks: we added the other six sites along the way, but the effort began in December 1999 for the sites in Licking County. The last stage of negotiating the departure of golf & a country club from the site opens in Common Pleas Court on Oct. 17th. I’d say MUCH more, but the club’s legal representation has subpoenaed me (I was an Attorney General’s witness for the initial eminent domain case in 2019 which we won, but it was appealed up the line, stuffed at each level, now setting the compensation for the buy out in front of a jury), so ask me again after about Oct. 24th. Call me a hostile witness, which I fully expect will be asked for after I’m sworn in.

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  20. basset said on September 25, 2023 at 10:01 pm

    So, Jeff G, is there anything to be learned from shards this recent?

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  21. Jeff Borden said on September 25, 2023 at 10:10 pm

    Reading about the mounds and the artifacts beneath, if you’re interested in more about them, there’s a wonderful, scholarly book where they are featured prominently. “Four Lost Cities” by Annalee Newitz does indeed look at the remains of four cities starting with one in southern Turkey, Pompeii, Angkor Wat and Cahokia.

    It’s appalling how recently the mounds in Cahokia were being bulldozed for developments –I believe in one case for a drive-in movie theater– but that’s apparently no longer the case. I’ve not actually been to the Serpent’s Mound in Ohio –though we learned of it in Ohio history books at school. But we did visit several while driving north along the two-lane highway linking Natchez to Vicksburg, Miss.

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  22. susan said on September 25, 2023 at 11:35 pm

    I had archaeology field school at Miami Fort, near the confluence of the Great Miami and Ohio rivers. Our project was to be partial excavation of a stone-capped burial mound. But a Boy Scout troop got there first, the winter before the project, and ravaged the site. Presumably they all got a badge out of it.

    There was enough remaining to recover some good information, however. What I thought was really interesting were distinct basket loads of soil used to create the mound, visible in the stratigraphy.

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  23. Dexter Friend said on September 26, 2023 at 2:59 am

    Jeff B. : Fostoria, Ohio is now known for more than railroad diamond crossings; their water tastes like dirt and mold.
    A whistleblower has complained and he just gets his complaint re-cycled as the mayor promises a new and better water system is on the way. Not much of any interest happens here in Bryan, but goddammitt we have the best water in the whole world. Except for Montpelier, 10 miles north…they win the title every few years.
    As a young man I swam anywhere, including in the James River by Newport News. I didn’t even know deadly currents drowned people there frequently. I just swam way out … it’s a very very wide river.
    I swam Lake Superior for the last time in the late 90s…in hot July the water was like a ice bath. Kudos to those who swim it in late September.

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  24. jim said on September 26, 2023 at 4:39 am

    No *god*, no *jesus* – and the book of fables was written by a bunch of people while they enjoyed their stay at the Funny Farm . The Catholic *church* is held together by a worldwide pedophile ring .

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  25. basset said on September 26, 2023 at 7:32 am

    Our next step on the South Carolina site will involve going back down there, probably this winter, and finding another of my ancestor’s kiln sites and the clay bank which supplied the dirt… then bringing some of it home, enough to make a new jug and carry on the tradition. Haven’t been anywhere near a potter’s wheel since high school art class, but surely there are some hobbyist potters around here who could help.

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  26. Jeff Gill said on September 26, 2023 at 8:19 am

    Basset, broken crockery in any era is an index to household economy, national & global trade, and sometimes hints about personal lives in the home relative to other debris. A colleague did a revelatory report at a conference I was at last year about an apparently bulldozed house site in downtown Toledo. The bits & pieces she found and categorized painted a picture of the neighborhood’s establishment, economic rise, tumult in the 1890’s, and transition to multi family rental & ethnic diversity. All from broken bits of china, fragments of jars & containers, plus debris from closing gas lines & adding electricity.

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  27. Linda said on September 26, 2023 at 10:38 am

    Re: Trump. What Mark Cuban said about him is true.”He is the guy who goes in the bar and says whatever he has to say to get laid.” Right wingers never thought that would apply to them. Ha ha.

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  28. Jeff Borden said on September 26, 2023 at 11:08 am

    Anyone reading about Taylor Swift’s efforts to get her fans registered to vote? She’s a one-woman registration machine and she’s freaking out the usual tRumpanzee zealots.

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  29. tajalli said on September 26, 2023 at 3:35 pm

    Spoutible (IMO the most twitter-like substitute so far) came out with a news feature that aggregates news sites globally and allows selection by site and topic (no sports for me). Pretty simple and comprehensive. The news feed can be independent of the “spouts” feed so I’ve begun using that rather than the less than timely Post.news digests.

    So, maybe I’ll try Mastodon for social hanging out, the light-hearted type rather than political discussion per se. Twitter is just about ready to implode with the institution of membership fees so I’ll miss Duchess Goldblatt, but that’s about it.

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  30. Jenine said on September 26, 2023 at 3:49 pm

    @Tajalli I was very attached to my curated Twitter feed. Now I’m really liking Bluesky Social. I’m happy to find a quorum of the folks I used to follow on Twitter plus other people I’ve discovered in Bluesky. Let me know if you want an invitation code. It’s not public yet, still in beta, so a code is needed.

    I tried Spoutible and the Mammoths but they didn’t stick for me.

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  31. dull_old_man said on September 26, 2023 at 4:42 pm

    A Mitch Albom sighting: The University of Chicago Alumni magazine had a brief interview with the new president of U of M, who went to U of C for college. Boilerplate questions–what was the last book you finished, last book you recommended, then it asked for the last book you didn’t finish. He said Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom. “I had expected pearls of wisdom about the meaning of life, but it was devoid of any such content.”

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  32. Jeff Borden said on September 26, 2023 at 5:04 pm

    Orange cancer found guilty of fraud in N.Y. state…to the surprise of no one.

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  33. tajalli said on September 26, 2023 at 8:31 pm

    Jenine, thanks for the offer! I’d put a request in to join a couple months ago, but the list is probably long, so an invitation code would be great. Ask the proprietress for my email.

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  34. Sherri said on September 26, 2023 at 8:31 pm

    I looked today at the NYTimes to see if there was anything about the presumptive Republican nominee for president calling for the execution of the retiring chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Didn’t see a thing. Same for the WaPo.

    Remember that next time you see an article from either about Biden’s age. Biden’s age is the But Her Emails of the 2024 campaign.

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  35. tajalli said on September 26, 2023 at 8:33 pm

    Jeff, was he actually found guilty or just indicted? I have the champagne chilling.

    [Edit] Ooooo. Guilty.

    https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/9/26/trump-found-liable-for-deceiving-businesses-banks-in-new-york-fraud-suit

    One of my book club members said to check the Christian Science Monitor if you’re coming up dry with the major media outlets. So Al-Jazeera.

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  36. LAMary said on September 26, 2023 at 9:38 pm

    People actually voted for this guy.

    https://tinyurl.com/2dku52u4

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  37. Dorothy said on September 27, 2023 at 4:27 am

    Man I’d love a code to join BlueSky. Are you only allowed to gift one, Jennie? Nancy knows my email address.

    Jason T @14 – we moved away from Pittsburgh 21 years ago but try to stay informed of the news there. We still subscribe to the P/G. I don’t get there as often as I used to since my mom died six years ago. Can you specify any of the churches that are being demolished and the subsequent demands by the Bishop to have parishioners pay the bill?

    I stopped attending Mass probably seven or eight years ago. All the pedophile priest stories just finally got to be too much for me. I do miss it – the feelings of belonging to a large group of people united in faith – but I just could not feel like I trusted the priests anymore. I have known some wonderful priests, but not for a long time.

    I auditioned for a play on Sunday and got the phone call yesterday asking me to play a part. We’re doing The Savannah Sipping Society, a play that just debuted eight years ago. It’s really short – 43 pages! We start rehearsing tonight. Just four women – two fewer than Steel Magnolias which I’ve done three times. It’s going to be fun, and a distinct change from the show I did in March which had a cast of a dozen characters.

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  38. Dexter Friend said on September 27, 2023 at 4:46 am

    Although I don’t know a damn thing about pottery shards, in 1980 my late brother-in-law Chuck and I went shark-teething in the Cooper River near Charleston, SC. Carla Lee and I made like 22 trips there over the long years. It was an aside to our shrimp and crab netting adventure. I can’t recall exactly, I think we just found them on the riverbank. I found like a dozen, mostly small petrified teeth. I gave them all to the kids but for one, a huge shark’s tooth. If I had known that river was infested with poisonous moccasins I never would have ventured out into the water.

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  39. FDChief said on September 27, 2023 at 8:03 am

    Ramaswamy is the RFK Jr of the wingnuts; utterly hopeless so free to let his piehole gape and make mouth-noises for lunatic MAGAts to cream their jeans to…before they troop obediently to vote Trump.

    Who, speaking of which, went on an even-more-unhinged-than-usual rant at one of his Trumparteitags the other day promising to tear into the free (i.e. non-Newsmax) press in terms that Josef Stalin would have turned up his nose as too openly mad-dictator-esque and crude.

    And the reaction?

    The GQP lapped it up (natch). The rest of the U.S..?

    Well, the “plan A” seems to be “hope he loses the 2024 general”…and there doesn’t seem to be a plan B, probably because it involves “hope he’s too incompetent again to actually do this stuff or we’re gonna be forced into that scary “die on your feet or live on your knees” thing…”

    And here we are.

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  40. Jeff Gill said on September 27, 2023 at 9:17 am

    Basset, just saw a colleague in Ohio post this as a nice for instance:

    https://www.facebook.com/100015243933930/posts/pfbid02Tp3u7sevzDrbpD1vAWDtHpSWEoob17HhVJh9gNw2RgziXda35wgepURpnGQGLtGnl/?mibextid=cr9u03

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  41. Icarus said on September 27, 2023 at 10:16 am

    Jennie, if you have more codes I’d like to request one. I too had curated a nice Twitter feed only to see it go to trash thanks to Phoney Stark.

    I also haven’t been to mass since my kids’ baptism and that was the final straw. The priest made us attend the mass before hand, they use to not do that. What could two 1-year olds possibly gain by sitting through an hour long mass in Polish?

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  42. Jenine said on September 27, 2023 at 10:32 am

    I have 2 Bluesky codes right now. I think I get one every two weeks so it won’t be long. For those who’ve asked, I’ve requested our host to share my email with you or send me yours. And I’ll send you a code.

    I’m having to work on giving them away – it seems like most people in my circle have already chosen their social media channel (f’book, insta, reddit, etc.) and aren’t interested.

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  43. Jeff Borden said on September 27, 2023 at 10:37 am

    Tajalli,

    This is from David Cay Johnston, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who has been delving into Lumpy’s finances for years.

    https://www.rawstory.com/trump-fraud-lawsuit-2665742036/

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  44. tajalli said on September 27, 2023 at 11:56 am

    Jeff, thanks for the link. Looks like I will have to make my special chocolate cake with cherries on top to properly celebrate the fullness of the penalty.

    The recipe was a birthday present from friends in my college dorm that’s egg and dairy free (they knew I had an allergy to eggs), decades before veganism came into being. It uses vinegar and oil and maraschino cherries, so a chocolate cherry sweet and sour salad dressing cake.

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  45. alex said on September 27, 2023 at 12:13 pm

    Serendipitously, on this day in 2020…

    alex said on September 27, 2020 at 9:56 pm

    In other Sunday evening news, Brad Parscale threatened to off himself and got dragged off to the booby hatch:

    https://www.sun-sentinel.com/local/broward/fort-lauderdale/fl-ne-brad-parscale-incident-fort-lauderdale-20200928-g4bcine3fbb7jhjniiroo3yuse-story.html

    Not sure which will be the bigger humiliation for Trump — getting convicted of tax fraud or having his real net worth laid bare for all the world to chortle at.

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  46. David C said on September 27, 2023 at 12:20 pm

    The best part of the fraud conviction is if the Lord Damp Nut hadn’t run for President he could have crimed the rest of his pathetic life. But because people are like “I seen him on TV” and were stupid enough to think he’s a talented businessman instead of him being a pants shitting, fascist, moron, we were stuck with him. Sort of makes you want to look at every talented real estate billionaire because none of them strike me as being a particular cut above this one.

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  47. Julie Robinson said on September 27, 2023 at 12:31 pm

    tajalli, that cake sounds delish and I think we will all be celebrating. I’ve had a similar cake a couple of times, originally known as Depression cake and reincarnated as Vegan cake. The cherries would be a marvelous addition; the last time we made it we had fresh raspberries so we mashed them a bit and poured over the top. Really, so many possibilities when it comes to chocolate.

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  48. Sherri said on September 27, 2023 at 2:35 pm

    The University of Washington has several “capacity-constrained” majors. In other words, even if you get into UW, you may not be able to get into the major of your choice. After serving as a student member of the informatics major admissions committee, a UW student realized that there were rubrics that weren’t known to students being used to determine who got it. He further realized that UW was a public institution, subject to public records requests. He has turned those two insights into a web page to help students get into capacity constrained majors.

    https://www.seattletimes.com/education-lab/uw-student-spills-secrets-to-getting-into-most-desirable-majors/

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  49. tajalli said on September 27, 2023 at 3:30 pm

    Julie, the trick for me is to use the maraschino cherry juice as part of the liquid, put most of the quartered cherries in the batter and just decorate the top a bit. Plus chopped walnuts, forgot those.

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  50. Jeff Borden said on September 27, 2023 at 4:14 pm

    Why do right-wingers always punch down? The list of programs they want to slash to the bone to bring about a short-term continuation of the government aim exclusively at children, the poor, the hungry and the sick. Not one suggestion of cuts to things that might hurt the fee-fees of the mega-donors.

    We really have to drive this horrible party into the ground. If there is an ‘R’ by the name of a candidate, it should be a scarlet letter and they should not receive your vote. For any office. Any office.

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  51. David C said on September 27, 2023 at 4:49 pm

    Jeff, I think the expression is don’t bite the hand that feeds you. Too bad we have a lot of don’t bite the hand that smacks you in the face people in the country. Of course they’re all temporarily embarrassed millionaires.

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  52. Julie Robinson said on September 27, 2023 at 5:19 pm

    Mmm…chocolate-walnut-cherry…mmm.

    In other news, the wedding is nine days out and who is imploding–the bride, the groom, the parents? Nope, it’s the grandma, whose entire job is showing up. We’re having some fun times here, hence the chocolate fantasies.

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  53. Mark P said on September 27, 2023 at 5:24 pm

    Georgia Representative and junior league moron Marjorie Taylor Greene has discovered the Holman Rule, and is trying to use it to “fire” Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Someone should probably explain the concept of impeachment and a bill of attainder.

    Nah. That would be an exercise in futility. She defines a new level of density in a person who can still walk and apparently feed herself.

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  54. Mark P said on September 27, 2023 at 5:46 pm

    I didn’t make myself clear: junior league KKK member

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  55. Jeff Borden said on September 27, 2023 at 7:36 pm

    Conservatives have lost whatever fig leaf of intellectualism they ever possessed. Once, there were William F. Buckley (though his magazine argued in favor of segregation right up to 1960), Willian J. Kirkpatrick, Charles Krauthammer, “Bloody Bill” Kristol, Mona Charen, who while advocating ideas and programs I found repulsive, were at least highly intelligent and capable of making interesting arguments. They knew history, philosophy, foreign policy, world affairs. They understood the various arcs of history. I disliked them mightily, but I didn’t believe they were stupid.

    My guess is the last book Marjorie Taylor Green read was “Rogue” by Sarah Palin, while Lauren Bobo’s last book was an Archie comic.

    We’re choking to death on the stupid. We’re in grave peril because so many fucking dumb people have so much fucking power.

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  56. FDChief said on September 27, 2023 at 8:09 pm

    Jeff: Anyone who, at this point, votes Republican for any office whatsoever should have to turn in their voter registration card like a drunk surrendering his car keys. They’re simply not competent to participate in a democratic republic.

    And yet…there they are. A nation of millions of Boeberts and EmptyG’s; ignorant, arrogant, aggressively stupid and intolerant. Determined to rule or ruin. Unwilling to accept mere electoral defeat. More than happy to usher in fascism if it makes one soyboy or gay girl cry.

    Seriously…what do you do with people like that?

    I know the answer…but the bulk of the commentariat here doesn’t like it or want to hear it.

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  57. tajalli said on September 27, 2023 at 8:20 pm

    FDChief, do you mean cue the Daleks?

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  58. Dexter Friend said on September 27, 2023 at 10:19 pm

    Are you watching this idiot Tim Scott and this cartoon voiced Vivek Ramaswamy? My head is shaking at these creeps and their bloviation.

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  59. FDChief said on September 27, 2023 at 10:22 pm

    Let’s just say that some people’s pelts should have a bounty on them, like coyotes. Ten bucks. Maybe fifteen for Trump just because he’d be so greasy and hard to clean.

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  60. FDChief said on September 28, 2023 at 4:43 am

    Speaking of human waste…wasn’t there another of those Republican “debates” last night? Anyone drunk or bored enough to watch and find out what puppies Cruella & Co. propose to skin this time?

    My guess is that the CNN people are too busy fretting about Biden’s AARP status to bother.

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  61. Dexter Friend said on September 28, 2023 at 7:23 am

    I had to search for the debate because it was on Fox and FBN, but hell yes I watched it. One of these asswipes will likely be Trump’s running mate and we must be informed. It’s not old school closed circuit Pay-TV, and Netflix et al have been offering lame programming lately.
    What great entertainment, watching Tim Scott rip into Nikki Haley over curtains! Oh my, must-see TV. Yep.
    And watching Tim Scott saying racism in the USA is a myth! Such clarity. And oh that Ramaswamy, what a genius. A true Trump sycophant, so worldly. Burn that coal, by gawd! It’s our once and future world.
    Jeez.

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  62. alex said on September 28, 2023 at 7:29 am

    I wouldn’t waste my time watching any of those lightweights fielding softballs when I can read all about it in a couple of paragraphs the next day.

    From what I see this morning, the biggest moments were Chris Christie calling Trump “Donald Duck” and Tim Scott attacking Nikki Haley for wasting public money on office curtains. And the moderators were ridiculed for their failed effort to get the candidates to play a “Survivor” game in which they each were supposed to make a list of the others they would vote off the stage.

    Trump’s going to end up in the slammer so all this horse-race political bullshit seems utterly pointless. The press ought to be talking about what the GOP will need to do when he’s wearing an orange jumpsuit instead of orange makeup.

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