My old neighbor in Fort Wayne — a saint, and Kate’s second mother — has a business cleaning offices and sometimes houses. Houses were more of a sideline, but once when we lived here she told me a terrible story about one. It was a nice house, in a good suburban subdivision, maybe set back a bit from its neighbors. On her way out, she complimented the owner on how nice it was.
“Yes,” the owner said. “I’m glad we were able to save it.”
The story unfolded like this: For three years or so, it had been occupied by two teenagers, who’d been abandoned by their parents. The mother left first, perhaps due to some sort of mental crisis, and then the father was offered a job in another state. The teens objected to being uprooted, so the father said, fine, you guys can stay here on your own. He said he’d send them money, and they were told to behave themselves.
In perhaps the least surprising news possible, they did not do this.
Soon the house became known as a teen party venue, and over the course of the next couple of years, the place was trashed. One detail I remember was about the night some kid brought over several gallon cans of paint, which were enthusiastically flung out the windows, lids off. Paint streamed down the sides of the house, and onto the roof and driveway. By the time the teens finished high school, the house was nearly unsalvageable.
I wondered at the time what it would be like to have both your parents abandon you, and at such a time of your life. I wondered what happened to those young people, how they grew up. I wonder where they are now. I wonder what the cops knew.
This week a far worse case of child abandonment was revealed here in Detroit. Three children — a boy, 15, and two girls, 12 and 13 — were found living on their own in a condo where garbage, mold and feces had piled up over the course of four years. This is in Pontiac. The neighbors were stunned. Everyone else was stunned, too, stunned and amazed that this could go on so long. The kids said food was left on the front porch, usually by delivery services. The mother lived nearby, with another child. That child’s father said he had no idea about the other three.
And how was this discovered? The landlord hadn’t been paid rent for a few months, and requested a welfare check.
There are a lot of unanswered questions. Today the county prosecutor filed first-degree child abuse charges. But it’s pretty clear that when we say sometimes children “fall through the cracks,” those aren’t cracks, they’re chasms.
More will be revealed.
How can anyone do this to children. I just don’t understand.
OK! Let’s move on. My friends whose house I’m staying in this week have the same coffeemaker we do. We have a different configuration — thermal carafe with no burner FTW — but we both have Moccamasters. These are pricey machines, but make excellent coffee. Alan has us on a strict maintenance schedule for ours. My friends do not. However, I am here and this is one of the week’s services I provide: Cleaning the Moccamaster. I just finished it, and I’ll explain the process to you, if you too have a teensy bit of OCD about getting stuff sparkling.
Here are the miracle solutions, purchased from Amazon. The gray box is for the innards, the blue for the pot itself:
They’re just powders, and speaking of OCD, I’d like to have a word with Urnex about why one box contains three packets of powder and the other four, because you use them together and that is annoying to always have to be ordering one or the other. But whatever. The gray descaler goes first. You dissolve it in water and let it run through. Here’s the Before picture:
Yuck, I know. I usually let the descaler run halfway through, turn the pot off and let it sit and do its work. Turn it back on after 10 minutes or so and run it all through. Then three water run-throughs, and you’re ready for the pot cleaner. This is where it gets sexy.
The pot cleaner is the same process — dissolve it in water and pour it through. You would not believe how much oil and gunk it takes off. This is the first pass through:
That looks like coffee, but it’s just gunk. Dump it out, and send three pots of plain water through, maybe tidy up with a paper towel here and there, and here is the After:
This may be one reason a skills assessment and interest inventory I took in high school said I should maybe run a commercial fishery. There’s just something about a project like this that is so much more satisfying than, say, writing.
The weekend is appearing on the horizon, and I’ll be going home to Wendy. You all have a good one, and if you like good coffee, enjoy a cup. I think I’ll have two.
Dexter Friend said on February 20, 2025 at 5:52 am
Carla Lee provided child care for years. One motherless boy she cared for came in smelling of piss, filthy clothes, dirt caked in his outer ears.
This boy lived with his dad, who worked but gee, he couldn’t care for his kid. My wife had him shower and clean up, trimmed his unruly hair, bought him some new clothes and…taught him to read. Yeah, this boy had been shuffled along and was in Grade 3 , but was illiterate. The boy was transformed.
I was so proud of my wife’s dedication.
It takes a village. Hilary told us that.
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Dorothy said on February 20, 2025 at 7:00 am
I read that horrifying story yesterday and it haunted me. Dexter that is a wonderful story about your wife and her heartfelt reaction to that sweet boy! I have a happy sort of story to tell, too.
I’m in two quilts guilds in Columbus. One of the guilds had our monthly meeting on Tuesday this week. Our guest speaker was a woman in the Columbus Department of Health, and she works with women having babies and who need vital assistance and guidance. This guild has been donating baby quilts to this organization for 19 years (I’ve only been a member for 2.5 years). Valerie brought three co workers with her, one of whom was a recipient of a quilt when she had her fourth child four years ago. She brought the quilt with her, and said her 4 yr old son still loves this quilt. From the back of the room one member, Barb, spoke up and said “Oh! That’s one that I made!” Well, they made a beeline for each other to hug it out, and I’m positive most of us in the room got very misty-eyed and we all clapped wildly!
Valerie said they helped 766 babies and moms last year. We hadn’t kept track of how many quilts we gave them last year, but that night there were 51 to give them to distribute in 2025. We’re going to try to get at least 400 quilts made for the year. Words can’t describe how fulfilling it is to do something that makes an impact, however small, for a mom and new baby.
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Deborah said on February 20, 2025 at 7:31 am
You guys are making me cry:
We’re in Southern California for our truncated trip because of the serious surgery of my husband’s granddaughter’s father. We will be seeing them Friday. Right now we’re at Miracle Manor in Desert Hot Springs, a spa in the middle of the desert with a natural hot springs pool. It’s heaven to soak in. The place is zen like, simple, spare and quiet. A good place to be while all the chaos is whirling around in the world because of the current regime.
Next we go to Anaheim to see the granddaughter, we usually stay with them but because her father is still in a hospital bed set up in their living room we’re staying in a hotel for a few nights, then we go back to NM.
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Jeff Gill said on February 20, 2025 at 7:41 am
Huzzah for caring for kids, society’s most basic function.
Nancy made me think of “Cannery Row,” both the Steinbeck novel (excellent) & Nolte/Winger film of 1982 (excellent in different ways from the book, but both worth your time). A commercial fishery sounds good right now. Our local politicians are lying like Berber, and it’s increasingly hard to find ways to get the word out “their lips are moving, so…” to my fellow citizens, a few of whom still want to care for children and the vulnerable.
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ROGirl said on February 20, 2025 at 7:47 am
This Day in History: in 1939 20,000 people attended a Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden in New York City.
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Jeff Gill said on February 20, 2025 at 7:56 am
For the record as you read the latter third of this, I’ve never once been contacted by or spoken to anyone from the law director’s office. Which makes their claims here… interesting. To whom ARE they speaking?
https://www.thereportingproject.org/heath-council-approves-camping-ban-saying-plans-for-a-special-court-to-help-unsheltered-people-persuaded-them-to-vote-yes/
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Julie Robinson said on February 20, 2025 at 8:04 am
Not sure about the blue box, but I’d lay odds the gray one is mostly citric acid. You can get it in a big bag for next to nothing. This is a Good Thing*, because Orlando water has a lot of minerals, and someone is using the electric teakettle pretty much once an hour. *Isn’t that what Martha Stewart used to say?
I could write for hours about neglected children and filling the gap, but then I’d be neglecting today’s duties, so I’d better be off to tackle them.
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Courtney said on February 20, 2025 at 8:56 am
I realize this is absolutely not the point of this group but because right now I’m absolutely paralyzed whenever I read the news, I’d like to suggest this recipe. It’s savory, simple, and EVERYONE ate including my (occasionally) picky boyfriend and my foodie 14 year old and my 11 year old son who doesn’t like “fancy” food. And me. I liked it too.
https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1016135-rishia-zimmerns-chicken-with-shallots?unlocked_article_code=1.r04.cMIp.qGBl4rBXEL0v&smid=share-url
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Dorothy said on February 20, 2025 at 9:46 am
This group discusses cooking ALL THE TIME Courtney so don’t apologize for sharing that recipe! I just made a NYT easy chicken soup recipe on Monday for our dinner that uses ground chicken instead of chicken pieces and it was delicious. I didn’t have a box of regular chicken broth, only a box of Swanson’s spicy chicken broth. (I don’t know how I bought that accidentally…). And i had some Better Than Bouillon in the fridge, so I came up with 8 cups of broth easily. The spicy broth was a little too spicy so we put a dollop of sour cream in our bowls for each bowl,and that made all the difference. Delicious.
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alex said on February 20, 2025 at 11:55 am
Courtney! I thought that one looked familiar and I see that I cooked it a while back. I love just about anything that combines dijon and tarragon, and as I remember this was like a different take on chicken Provencal but same method basically.
In case anyone missed it, Neil Steinberg’s column yesterday was much like the story coming out of Pontiac only this one was about the abuse and neglect of a dog. What was especially shocking is that the dog’s owner was a well-to-do pediatric physician but who also happened to be a hoarder. The dog was discovered near death in a plastic storage tote by a cleaning service that came in to help the owner prepare for a move to Florida, from where she has been extradited to face animal cruelty charges in Illinois. Few stories bring me to tears but that one certainly did.
Maybe I should have stayed in Illinois. I was quite moved by Governor J.B. Pritzker’s state of the state address in which he recalled the threatened neo-Nazi march on Skokie in 1978 and drew parallels between the present political moment and Nazi Germany and our urgent need to act. We’ll never see such courage from the Trump bootlicking MAGA governor of Indiana.
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Jeff Borden said on February 20, 2025 at 1:27 pm
An Illinois state senator went spluttering on camera about how Gov. Pritzker owed him and all Republicans an apology. I wrote on his page that HE should be apologizing for his silence in the face of the tRump putsch. Now, the Kane County Republican Party is cross with me. Oh, my. Whatever will I do?
Isn’t it wonderful that under tRump we’re embracing a bloodthirsty dictator leading an international pariah state? Aren’t you proud that now ‘Murica joins Iran, Korea, Belarus, Hamas and Hezbollah as Russian allies?
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Sherri said on February 20, 2025 at 1:42 pm
“Oh, we don’t want to put homeless people in jail,” as they vote for an ordnance that says exactly that.
One of the things I always emphasized to my fellow planning commissioners was that it didn’t matter what anyone said about what their plans were, or what pretty pictures they showed, what matter was what got written in the code.
But the Supreme Court has given jurisdictions permission to criminalize homelessness now, and they’re rushing to do so, though it doesn’t actually solve any problem.
We have had a Community Court here in Redmond, with associated services, and it’s been successful in its way, but what it has not done is affect homelessness much. You can help people with mental health and substance abuse, but a community court can’t manufacture affordable housing.
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Deborah said on February 20, 2025 at 3:03 pm
I keep getting texts to donate to various Democratic organizations to combat what is going on with the Trump regime but what I’m not hearing is what is the donated money going to be used for? Throwing money at it doesn’t seem like a very good strategy to me. Are they buying time on TV stations? Are they helping the campaigns of Dem legislators up for elections in 2026? If so who are they? It’s aggravating to constantly have to type Stop only to have them still contact me. It’s not helping them from my standpoint.
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David C said on February 20, 2025 at 3:17 pm
The money goes to consultants for doing focus groups to determine the exact correct amount of fascism the Democratic Party should support in their 2028 Presidential campaign.
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Jeff Borden said on February 20, 2025 at 4:13 pm
The supine Senate allowed tRump to run the table on his nominees. Kash Patel is your new FBI director. Enjoy your new regime, ‘Murica.
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Sherri said on February 20, 2025 at 5:52 pm
I think I should call up Bobby Jr and tell him that in the spirit of Elon, I have a guaranteed program that for losing weight for people in this country, that will work for almost everyone.
My plan? I’ll cut off everyone’s legs! Guaranteed weight loss!
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Sherri said on February 20, 2025 at 6:51 pm
I’m not sure why they’re even bothering with the sleight of hand, but here’s what I predict will happen with all the federal cuts.
Musk will continue to gut the federal work force, maybe even getting into the Pentagon. That still won’t produce the kind of paper savings he needs to produce, so he’ll have to cut more programs. The goal is to produce enough “savings” to justify making Trump’s tax cuts permanent. They expire this year otherwise.
Then, once those tax cuts are locked in, the services the federal government was providing still need to be provided, so now it’s time for the contractors to step up to the trough and get paid to do what employees were doing. Look for Palantir to be the modern day Halliburton – the all purpose government contractor. Sure, it will cost more doing it this way, but who cares about the deficit?
I’m really not sure why they’re even bothering going through a budget process with Congress, since they just ignored the last one. Just sign an EO declaring the tax cuts permanent, and hell, make ‘em bigger. Why pretend?
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Julie Robinson said on February 20, 2025 at 8:04 pm
A very sad story from church this morning–elderly parishioner who has run through all her money. She somehow signed up to live at a senior residence that costs 4K per month; not even assisted living, just cleaning and meals on top of the apartment. She sold her house and it just seemed like she was getting so much money that she never did the math on long it would last.
Now she’s had an expensive car repair and she can’t make rent next month. She understands that she needs to move, but thinks she can sell some antiques to raise the money. I didn’t have the heart to tell her how little they’ll be worth.
Both husbands dead, only child dead, she called her cousin to ask for a loan and he told her she was delusional. I agree, but it’s gonna be a long, hard road.
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alex said on February 20, 2025 at 8:09 pm
Paul Krugman seems to think what’s happening is more like a mafia protection racket. Trump will make carve outs for those in Congress who kiss his ass and punish anyone who doesn’t. His beneficence toward Eric Adams and Rod Blagojovitch is meant to show he’s not going to be strictly partisan about it.
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Andrea said on February 20, 2025 at 9:54 pm
It’s been a long, long time since ol’ Blago identified with the Democratic party and an even longer time since they claimed him. Not sure he counts toward the bipartisan label. He campaigned for Trump the last couple of elections.
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alex said on February 20, 2025 at 11:38 pm
Even our local TV stations are complicit in the deceit.
WANE TV is so desperate for access that it gives a total pass to Congressman Marlin Stutzman when he says that DOGE has uncovered billions in waste and fraud. Among the egregious crimes, Stutzman says that they uncovered $20 million given to Iraq for a “Sesame Street program” that could have been better spent in towns like Kendallville or Bluffton. A good journalist would have followed up by asking, “So where is that clawed-back money going to be spent? Are you saying that it’s actually coming to Kendallville and Bluffton? And if so, what are they going to do with it?”
A good journalist would also ask what the fuck he’s talking about. A Sesame Street program? Is he saying we’re putting on expensive puppet shows for Iraqi children? Or grooming them to be homosexuals, a favorite theme of the right, especially when it comes to public television? It looks to me like they’re letting him speak in code to the nutters without decoding it for the rest of us. That money spent in Iraq might very well be going toward some very legitimate and worthy purpose but we’ll never know unless someone actually asks what the fuck Stutz the Yutz is yammering about.
But don’t expect anything like that from the wizened telecom majors who never made it out of the minor league markets like this one.
On Edit: Andrea at 20: I know that Blago was a sellout long ago, and Trump loves a sellout. He just made one Director of National Intelligence. And he’ll reward any other Democrat who sells out, or any never-Trump Republican who does the same. Consider JD Vance.
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Suzanne said on February 21, 2025 at 9:57 am
This is an excellent assessment of where we are and how we got here:
https://www.thetimes.com/comment/columnists/article/conspiracists-are-about-to-get-a-dose-of-reality-c2fltx0xd
“But an underrated factor in modern irrationality and zealotry is the West’s stability. Our society has been peaceful and healthy for so long that for many people serious disaster has become inconceivable. You can rattle the bars of the cage as fiercely as you like but you will never actually escape the comfort of the zoo.”
“As the economy flounders, political crises loom, vaccination rates fall and science deniers enter government, the West is becoming a more dangerous place and its fools are less insulated from the repercussions of their own beliefs. The Texan antivaxers may only be the first to find out. The paradise of fools is coming to an end. I do not hope for an apology or recantation. I just hope they do not take the rest of us down with them.”
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Deborah said on February 21, 2025 at 11:37 am
“The solution right now is not to fix the problem, but to wake the sleepwalkers.”, from someone on Bluesky regarding the effectiveness of protests and small acts of resistance. We’re in a crisis right now and we need people to wake up and realize how serious this is.
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Mark P said on February 21, 2025 at 12:48 pm
The country has needed a reset for some time. We are currently getting it. I have no idea how long this reset might take before we see the final outcome. It is going to be messy, a lot of people are going to get hurt, and whatever rises from the ashes may be good or it may be bad. I’m not happy about having to live through it, and in fact I might not.
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FDChief said on February 21, 2025 at 1:15 pm
Sherri: re: jailing the homeless…that’s been a thing here in Portland for some time. Our problem is highly visible, the “liberals” (i.e. the median Portland city voter) have resisted criminalizing homelessness, so now the situation is so volatile that the notion of tossing hoboes in jail – hello, Nineteen Thirties! – has returned.
What seldom enters the conversation is the simple facts that 1) a huge percentage of homeless are homeless because they’re too poor to afford any sort of housing, that 2) jailing them and handing them a prison record won’t make it easier for them NOT to be poor, while 3) the cost of jailing them exceeds all but the most lavish rent-subsidy or housing program costs.
Like most “conservative solutions” it’s the simple-minded-est answer to a difficult and complex problem. So it appeals to the simple-minded sorts of people who now vote “conservative”.
Speaking of which…
In our currently-departed pal Waldo Pepper’s defense, I was only half-kidding about IEDs, because when you stare into the MAGA abyss…
(and here’s the deep dive: Google “His mission is to eradicate ‘woke Jesus'” at Salon – it’s a Marcotte column from 2/18/25 – that lays it out)
…you understand that this isn’t “politics” the way most of us think of politics. This is a cult, and these people are cultists. They don’t see losing elections as “oh, well, we’ll try again in a couple of years…” but “THE END OF CIVILIZATION!!!!” Their view of us isn’t as Americans with opposing views but as evil.
You don’t compromise or debate with evil. You destroy it.
So this works the other way. There’s no way to reach these people.
When the MAGA response to Trump declaring himself king is “a constitutional monarchy is better than socialism”? How the hell do you “reason” with that?
But.
To accept that is to accept that if these people see this as an existential struggle, as “war”, that – as Tubby also tweeted – “Who saves his country breaks no laws”…well, that’s civil war.
I accept that. As a former soldier once said of earlier traitors: “War is the remedy that our enemies have chosen, and I say let us give them all they want.”
But I can see how horrific that is, and how difficult it is for many of my liberal comrades to accept it.
But. I think that’s where we are now. Until this year we could pretend otherwise. Now? I don’t know how anyone pretends what we’re seeing is anything but open warfare on the America of the New Deal, the America of the 20th Century, the America we all grew up in.
Now we are enemies.
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Jeff Gill said on February 21, 2025 at 1:30 pm
Julie, those were the recurring situations as a minister that just wrecked me… and helping generally is going to get you in trouble, as family members are as willfully detached from fiscal realities as the increasingly confused senior that’s usually in the middle of it. And now my sister & I are doing a version of it with our mother, not that she’s aware of it. We finally put her in a memory care facility, did the math on how long this will last, and it’s a race to death versus dismissal to I have no idea what. Then we point out two months in that, um, fecal incontinence issues aren’t being properly handled (hygiene issues are why my sister couldn’t cope any more with her at home after five years of increasing cognitive decline), to which they respond by upping the monthly fee by $2,000, which jolts the deadline closer to us (we have until Hallowe’en or Thanksgiving at this rate), plus “in the contract, it’s the family that provides adult undergarments to us for use.” Even though we were the ones to notice and point out there was an issue, but somehow we should have anticipated the whole situation, and it’s our fault she needed them.
I’ve warned my sister that their broad hints that our mother can stay there when she’s spent down on Medicaid only are common lies, and we will have to find a nursing care facility to take her when she’s on Medicaid which is going to horrify you . . . so do I quit a third time and move to Indiana (again) to do personal care in a room in my sister’s house? Fun questions for 2025, which is just turning out to be a barrel of flaming monkeys on meth…
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Carter Cleland said on February 21, 2025 at 2:03 pm
This should be required reading for everyone, so pass it forward.
https://www.chicagotribune.com/2025/02/20/column-russia-wins-cold-war-ukraine-nato-shackelford/?share=atmfaofaeoacuniuca2w
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Carter Cleland said on February 21, 2025 at 2:10 pm
Sherri @ 17. I heard Majority 54’s Jason Kander suggest that Elon may take some of the “savings” he’s reaped from gutting the agencies, and give every American a check, thereby buying-off any criticism.
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SusanG said on February 21, 2025 at 2:20 pm
Years ago, just out of college, I worked for a prof who grew up in a remote area of the state of Washington. At twelve, he witnessed a neighbor shoot his father. He became the man of the house. He believed twelve was the age of adulthood. Anything else was mollycoddling.
My Breville expressso machine makes great lattes, but such a diva. I descale with white vinegar. For the gunk, I use Urnex’s Cafiza Expresso Cleaning Powder. I have the 20 oz container used by the professionals. No wussy packets in this household. Ingredients are lots of sodium this and sodium that and tartaric acid. Customer reviews warn don’t touch the powder.
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alex said on February 21, 2025 at 2:50 pm
I just buy cheap Mr. Coffee units at Target or wherever, run vinegar through them when they get gunked up, and toss them when they eventually burn out after maybe 3 years. I don’t know that buying and maintaining an expensive machine makes all that much difference, at least not for my purposes, which is to receive a tolerable dose of morning laxative and a wake-me-up.
One thing that’s absent in our water here is lime, and that makes my coffee makers pretty low-maintenance.
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Jeff Borden said on February 21, 2025 at 3:43 pm
Putin was a KGB colonel. He’s a murderous motherfucker, but he’s not dumb. He recognizes the abject stupidity infecting at least one-third of our citizens. He knows how easily these saps are manipulated. All he had to do was wait for the morons to rally around another moron, albeit one with a slick shtick. And now he sees his patience rewarded. Any thinking citizen is alarmed and ashamed by tRump, but it’s too late now. China will be the dominant world power very, very soon. tRump and the QOP are giving it to Xi on a silver platter.
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Sherri said on February 21, 2025 at 4:09 pm
Portland, like every other major city on the West Coast, has had a highly visible homeless population for years. Those liberal voters in those cities who don’t want to criminalize homelessness have also generally resisted upzoning their neighborhoods to build more housing to address the affordability crisis at the same time. There’s a battle and lawsuits over every single new housing project, especially one targeted for below market housing.
Portland and Seattle have been better than San Francisco and LA at allowing more housing, but not nearly good enough, and not without massive delays. There’s not enough housing being built at any level of affordability, from market rate to deeply affordable, to meet the need.
There were years when the median home price in Seattle increased by more than the starting salary for an engineer at Amazon.
It was why it was time for me to term off of planning commission. I just couldn’t listen to one more homeowner complaining about new apartment buildings bringing too much traffic and renters not invested in the community.
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Sherri said on February 21, 2025 at 5:34 pm
FDChief, I propose Wrong Way Corrigan as a better nickname than Waldo Pepper.
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SusanG said on February 21, 2025 at 5:39 pm
Sherri
You need to read these essays. Sounds like what you experienced. https://www.amazon.com/Housing-Crisis-Development-Democracy-Atlantic/dp/1638931968
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Mark P said on February 21, 2025 at 6:34 pm
Have you seen the references to a former Soviet intelligence official saying that they recruited Donald Trump as an asset in the 1980’s. One of the biggest parts of this story is that it appeared on several news sites and was quickly removed. You can still find it here and there.
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FDChief said on February 21, 2025 at 6:35 pm
Absolutely on the NIMBY problem. The City isn’t innocent – Bureau of Development Services is a notorious skinnerbox of arcane and labyrinthine rules that everyone hates – but the real issue is Portlanders want their lawns and will fight to the death against infill AND the developers want to build McMansions rather than cheap apartments.
In my airborne unit we used to call Air Force pilots “Waldo Pepper” and old habits die hard. The implication was that the throttle jockeys were addicted to zooming the wild blue yonder rather than putting us and our equipment on the same drop zone at the same time. So…being kind of a jackass, which suits our boy.
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Sherri said on February 21, 2025 at 6:36 pm
I’ll check them out, Susan.
The most annoying thing to me about having been involved in land use over the last decade is how many people who believe they are progressive will go absolutely nuts at the notion of building density anywhere near their single family homes. Traffic and schools are usually the first argument, but even if those are off the table, they’ll find an excuse.
My neighborhood is next door to a continuing care retirement community. It was there when the neighborhood was developed. Several years ago, they went to the city to modify their land use plan to add more assisted living apartments, with plans to build a couple of 3 story buildings. The land use changes were approved by the city.
When the community was actually ready for construction, they had decided to locate the buildings on a different part of the property than the original drawings had shown. Doesn’t matter, the land use changes weren’t predicated on those pictures. But the VP of our HOA, who had been on city council at the time the changes were approved, went ballistic, stirred up the neighbors, and fought the construction for years.
The complaints were that it would cut down trees and that the buildings would loom over our houses, and that the community was going back on a promise (that they had never made). When the HOA filed suit to stop, I was pissed and met with the president of the HOA, told him they would lose the suit and that they were a bunch of NIMBYs (the VP, who used to be a friend, wouldn’t meet with me). He said their lawyer said they had a good chance, and he didn’t appreciate being called a NIMBY.
They lost the suit eventually, the buildings have been constructed, and now more seniors have a place to live. But it added several years and a lot more money to the cost.
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David C said on February 21, 2025 at 8:08 pm
The last two apartment complexes in town were fought tooth and nail by the neighbors. They became instant environmentalists with a list of things that the apartments would do to the pristine corn fields they were building on. One of them, the neighbors said there would be Taco Bell bags all over the neighborhood. Hmmm, I wonder what they meant by that. The Common Council approved them anyway.
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Julie Robinson said on February 21, 2025 at 8:25 pm
The pissant Florida legislature has made camping outside a state park illegal, and forbids localities from refusing to enforce the new law. Orlando has arrested a few poor souls but it’s not clear that any have been prosecuted so far. Rentals go higher and no one wants a new apartment building near them. And wages do not keep up; rinse and repeat.
So we have made being unhoused a crime, even though having a criminal record will further complicate qualifying for an apartment. And our dear church lady may end up in a moldy and roach infested place.
Jeff G, my MIL had to go to a nursing home at the end, when everyone in the family had ruined their backs and there was no more money for home health aides. Immediately she developed rashes from the harsh detergents, so had a note in her file for the special detergents, only, sorry, someone forgot to read it and there went the rash again. So the family ended up hauling it home every week, which of course made things easier for the home.
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Sherri said on February 21, 2025 at 8:29 pm
Downtown Redmond consisted primarily of a bunch of ugly aging strip malls when we moved here over 20 years ago, but to hear some residents talk, that was preferable to the mixed use apartments buildings that have replaced them (which get referred to as “luxury apartments” and “Soviet-style housing”, often by the same people)
Fortunately, in Redmond, we outvoted the NIMBYs, and built more housing and density, and turns out, once you do, it gets easier and easier to outvote them, because the new people coming in are less NIMBY. Still not enough, but we’ve done better than most suburbs.
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Deborah said on February 22, 2025 at 10:29 am
We’re on the second leg of our CA trip. We’re now staying in a hotel on the residential side of Anaheim, not the Disney side. We’re here to be with my husband’s granddaughter and help get them food at mealtimes while her dad recovers from some pretty gruesome surgery. We took dinner over there yesterday and he’s improving but still in a lot of pain. He graduated from the hospital bed and can sit up in an easy chair from time to time now. It’s been 3 weeks since the knife and he has about 4 more weeks of not much movement, he does walk 10 minutes a day with a walker. He will be out of work for 6 months given his type of work which is being a large earth mover operator. His benefits are great, he’s in a union thank god. The business is going gang busters what with all the rubble clearing from the massive LA fires. The guy is only 53 and we’re wondering if he really can go back to that kind of work.
The granddaughter is not in a great headspace after her mom abandoned them 4 years ago for Jesus and now seeing her dad in so much pain, it’s been very hard on her. She’s completely devoted to her dad as you can imagine. She’s coping as best she can.
Life can take a turn you never expected.
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Dexter Friend said on February 22, 2025 at 1:36 pm
Ortho surgeon Joe Rusin passed away. He was best friends with my son-in-law Steve.
Doc’s last stop was a practice in Toledo, but he was usually found at the Napoleon hospital, saying he preferred to be around farmers. Doc had a farm near Swanton, he also loved cats.
Doc’s bio was impressive. He had been to conferences in Europe for the top 300 orthos in the world. He was a pilot but he had Steve fly his personal jet as he never got that license.
Daughter Sandi and Steve flew in last night from Florida for the services. They are staying at Doc and wife Pam’s mansion in the Toledo suburbs.
Of course I took note I am a year older than the departed surgeon.
I will get to visit a few days with my Florida daughter. Enjoy every sandwich. Like Warren said.
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Sherri said on February 22, 2025 at 3:40 pm
So I like to try to understand the motivations of my opposition. With Trump, it’s fairly easy, since he has the motivations of a poorly socialized toddler: I want it, it’s mine, you’re not my friend if you don’t give it to me. So he wants to suck up to Putin because Putin is the strong friend who will give him things (no he won’t, but that’s besides the point.)
But why do the rest of the GOP want to throw away relationships with Europe to side with Putin? What do they tell themselves siding with Putin will buy us? Peace? Like Putin will be satisfied with Ukraine? Trade? What trade? Compared to our economic ties with Europe, what could Russia offer?
We may not trade a ton of goods with Europe, but think of all the European companies invested in the US, with facilities in the US, from car manufacturers to pharmaceutical companies. Many of those European car manufacturers are located the South, firmly in Trump country. Why are they risking that? Do they really believe that if Trump destroys NATO Germany won’t rethink Volkswagen in Tennessee?
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Mark P said on February 22, 2025 at 4:00 pm
Sherri, you give MAGAts too much credit. They are not thinking about anything in particular except their grievances and the desire to own the liberals. I’m not sure what effect it would have for VW to close their plant in Tennessee, or BMW to close their plant in South Carolina. Or, perhaps one day, for Suzuki to close their small ATV plant in my hometown. There would be a lot of collateral damage if any of those plants close. There are a lot of European companies with facilities in the US. If things continue as they are, I could see many of them moving away.
I can’t help but wonder what’s going on in the Pentagon behind closed doors. My how things have changed, when the mere suggestion of a military coup is not outlandish.
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Sherri said on February 22, 2025 at 4:11 pm
Trump fired the Commandant of the Coast Guard immediately upon taking office. Now Pete Hegseth has fired the Chief of Naval Operations.
What do they have in common? They’re both women. Cant have any women in charge in our He-Man Girl-Haters Club.
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Sherri said on February 22, 2025 at 6:48 pm
The next generation of researchers is being told, go away.
https://www.wesa.fm/health-science-tech/2025-02-21/university-pittsburgh-phd-pause-research-funding-uncertainty
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Sherri said on February 22, 2025 at 7:08 pm
More details on what’s happening at grad schools because of the uncertainty around NIH funding.
https://www.statnews.com/2025/02/19/trump-funding-freeze-grad-student-postdoc-acceptances-paused-nih-research/
And that’s just NIH funding. Most scientific graduate programs are funded with federal dollars, whether through National Science Foundation, Department of Energy, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Office of Naval Research, and a myriad of others. I paid for undergrad working on a DOE grant project, and my grad school was funded by NSF and DARPA.
Elon and his tech bro oligarchs may want to cut everything so they don’t have to pay taxes, but they sure have benefited from hiring products of US grad schools whose graduate work was fully funded by the very things they’re trying to slash. People don’t pay tuition to get a CS PhD in this country, they get paid to get one, and the US government foots most of the bill.
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Sherri said on February 23, 2025 at 5:20 pm
“This is part of why the anti-woke diagnosis of what’s ailing Democrats is not only factually flawed and morally vacuous but also strategically enfeebling. To point out that, over the past decade, Democrats have consistently won more when feminist, anti-racist, pro-trans energies have been ascendant, and lost more when the party worked to muffle or distance itself from them, is not to argue that today’s Democratic candidates should be running on defunding the police or requiring land acknowledgments or excommunicating people confused by pronouns. It is to suggest that advice that Democrats should get quieter on ideas that are simply the right thing to do and that helped motivate millions to vote for them just reaffirms a pallid insincerity, and is therefore politically suicidal.”
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/wokeness-is-not-to-blame-for-trump.html
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Jeff Gill said on February 23, 2025 at 7:29 pm
And we’re getting word that the program I helped launch in 1992, which currently ensures stable transitional & supportive housing for about 144 people right now, plus prevents homelessness for some percentage of 2,400 more people we work with each year, is about to get slashed by 75 to 90% of our budget by May. Dumping another 150 some people into the streets where we already have (using last Friday morning’s head count at the emergency warming center) 43 people & 2 dogs sleeping in cars & other non-stable shelter options. That’s gonna work out just fine. Fine. It’s all fine.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/02/23/hud-cuts-doge-housing/
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Sherri said on February 23, 2025 at 8:08 pm
Remember Greg Abbot and Ron DeSantis flying immigrants to blue cities? Maybe we should start flying people made homeless by these cuts to Mar-a-lago and Elon’s compound in Austin.
Not really, they’d just have them shot. You can’t shame Republicans.
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