I had a shit-ton of work dumped on me in the last few days, so here’s more shortened shrift. First, be advised there’s a colt entered in the Kentucky Derby this year named Sandman. He has an excellent social-media team, or maybe it’s just Churchill Downs’. Whatever, he’s been popping up on my socials a lot in the last two days. With his name, as you could guess, he has fans in Metallica, who sent over a bunch of merch for the barn crew:
That’s Sandman, obviously. I love grays. What a beautiful boy. And look at all the faces in his team, overwhelmingly Latino/a. (I refuse to use Latinx, sorry.) I wonder if ICE will be dropping by to fuck up the Kentucky Derby this year, too. Of course, many of these people may well be Puerto Rican; racing is big there. Trust our ICE team not to understand they’re Americans too.
Horses don’t have walk-on music, but if they did? Man oh man, Sandman would have that race in the bag.
Moving on! To the Mysteries of Kristi Noem’s Purse. Who carries three grand around in a purse? The other day I read a business owner complaining on Facebook that the local parking meters haven’t been converted to an app, and still require the antique currency known as “change.” But we’re to believe our homeland security secretary was carrying around that much dough for “family activities” during Easter weekend? The most benign speculation is that she’s trying to keep her much-gossiped-about affair with Corey Lewandowski off the credit-card bills. The funniest was Roy’s, of course.
I am the increasingly rare adult who enjoys drinking milk, but I’m starting to think I should reconsider:
WASHINGTON, April 21 (Reuters) – The Food and Drug Administration is suspending a quality control program for testing of fluid milk and other dairy products due to reduced capacity in its food safety and nutrition division, according to an internal email seen by Reuters.
… The testing program was suspended because FDA’s Moffett Center Proficiency Testing Laboratory, part of its division overseeing food safety, “is no longer able to provide laboratory support for proficiency testing and data analysis,” the email said.
Thanks, Croaky! 10/10, no notes.
Back to real work.
Jeff Borden said on April 22, 2025 at 3:47 pm
Lotsa gangbangers carry fat wads of cash to demonstrate their power, but certainly not the Director of Homeland Hair Extensions. She wears a $50,000 Rolex to show off.
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nancy said on April 22, 2025 at 4:00 pm
There’s a guy on Twitter whose business is commenting on menswear. He is clever at a level that most of us will only see through the clouds. He was dunking on MAGA chuds over MS-13 after he pointed out that carrying that much cash was indeed very MS-13-like. They just walk, one after another, into his sights, and he picks them off boom-boom-boom.
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Deborah said on April 22, 2025 at 5:34 pm
These MAGAs are so careless with their personal belongings it’s something else. Their phones, chats, bags with thousands in cash and a passport, what’s the deal? Are these people so used to getting over by the skin of their teeth that they’re always clumsy and unprepared? Are they so used to being catered to they expect everyone else to do everything for them and take care of them constantly? Then because they’re such assholes, those people that work for them don’t care and let things slide? This may be the thing that saves Democracy as crazy as that sounds.
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Sherri said on April 22, 2025 at 6:41 pm
Tesla earnings are terrible. They’d be even worse without taxpayer-funded pollution credits. Hey DOGE, are those in line with the Trump fossil fuels forever agenda?
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/22/business/tesla-earnings-elon-musk.html?unlocked_article_code=1.Bk8.xHA1.9V9eb2qie5sf&smid=url-share
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Gretchen said on April 23, 2025 at 12:38 am
I read that one thing the Nazis did wrong was not account for most of the horse people in Germany were Jewish – not sure if it was breeders or trainers or both. But at the time armies were still reliant on horses, and they deported or arrested or caused to emigrate all the people who could have done horses for them.
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Jeff Gill said on April 23, 2025 at 7:14 am
I suspect she had a Glock 19 in that purse, too, and just didn’t report it as stolen.
@dieworkwear is one of the reasons I’m not entirely off Xwitter, but he is on Bluesky now, too. My sister, the professor of fashion design, is regularly in awe of his knowledge, and his scathing wit. He’s also a reporter; recently Derek had this to say about reshoring industry in his field – https://bsky.app/profile/dieworkwear.bsky.social/post/3lmb6ydkpic2w
An example of his journalism, in The Nation: https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/made-in-america-never-meant-more-ethical/
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Deborah said on April 23, 2025 at 10:13 am
Interesting thread Jeff G. Not sure it will actually ever happen here, I can’t see Americans paying for it. When I was in high school villager shirts and skirts were the in thing for girls to wear to school. I remember that brand of skirt then cost $45. In today’s dollars Google says that’s equivalent to $455. I couldn’t afford those villager skirts by a long shot, so I copied them and sewed them myself for a fraction, but of course took a lot of time because they had a fly front and pockets like men’s pants. The villager shirts cost a bit less but waaayyyy out of my price range, so ditto, I made those too. It was harder finding fabric that approximated the print patterns.
I’m always astounded that you can buy clothes now for so much less per piece. Yes they’re poorly made, of cheap fabrics and fit badly but people don’t seem to care. I don’t see that changing for a long, long time.
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alex said on April 23, 2025 at 10:36 am
Speaking of carelessness by Trump officials, this: https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/cronyism-capitulation-and-chaos?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=277517&post_id=161949472&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=false&r=43a8hi&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Last night I had the CBS evening news on and I was quite surprised — pleasantly — at the candor of the anchors regarding the retirement/resignation of 60 Minutes producer Bill Owens, who quit because he was being bullied by CBS’ parent company, Paramount, for refusing to toady up to Trump. Paramount needs Trump to sign off on a business deal that it badly wants and is also capitulating to a meritless lawsuit that Trump brought against 60 Minutes.
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Sherri said on April 23, 2025 at 11:40 am
“Capitulating to a meritless lawsuit” is so many words for saying “bribing”, which is the same thing Zuckerberg and Meta did when Trump won. Amazon, rather than go through the lawsuit fig leaf, paid $40 million for a Melania documentary. Justin Sun, a Chinese crypto guy who was facing charges from the SEC, put a bunch of money in Trump’s crypto company, resulting in $50 million in Trump’s pockets, and poof! Charges went away.
The constitutional crisis has already come and gone. We’re living in the post-constitutional world.
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Deborah said on April 23, 2025 at 12:45 pm
Well thank goodness, Senator Durbin has announced that he’s not seeking re-election. I sent an email to his office last week asking what he is doing, because he’s certainly not visibly been doing anything to show the tiniest bit of resistance. Apparently a whole bunch of people have been letting him know it’s time to go. While he’s done good stuff during his tenure, he’s not been up to the job lately.
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BigHank53 said on April 23, 2025 at 9:04 pm
Ms. Noem was carrying all of her goodies in a Gucci bag—a mere $4400. I mean who doesn’t have a bag that costs more than an ordinary person’s kitchen appliances?
That was most likely the original target of the theft—hard to trace and easy to sell.
Lots of speculation about the cash, but I suspect Ms. Noem is the sort of person who has found herself in a situation where a thousand bucks in cash can make an embarrassing problem disappear.
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Jeff Gill said on April 24, 2025 at 7:46 am
Embarrassing problems? Ms. Noem?
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alex said on April 24, 2025 at 8:03 am
Maybe she was shaking down establishments where she saw Hispanic people working.
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Sherri said on April 24, 2025 at 1:22 pm
Were Noem a Democrat flashing fancy bags and Rolexes and lots of cash, there were be articles everywhere wondering the source of her money.
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Dexter Friend said on April 24, 2025 at 2:22 pm
I wear Dogg Supply track pants (Snoop’s brand) and hoodies and quarter-zips and VA diabetic old-man shoes, so I am not fashion-conscious at all. John Fetterman is my fashion idol.
But I can’t stand seeing those goddam hair extensions flowing down past Noem’s chest.
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Deborah said on April 24, 2025 at 5:14 pm
I just ordered my marriage license from my first marriage just incase the Save Act passes. After I got my divorce I changed my name, but not to my maiden name, and when I got married the second time I kept that name. I knew I had the paper work for the first married name to the new name but I didn’t have my first marriage certificate which shows the change from my maiden name to my first married name. How complicated can you get? How many women are going to be able to do this when it’s time to vote and our name on our birth certificate doesn’t match our current ID? Anyway I have a passport so I don’t think I needed to do any of that, but I sort of wanted to see how hard it would be to do. It took me about an hour to figure out how to do it, it cost me $6 to get the document. What I have is an official PDF, I think. It came via email, it’s 3 pages. I suppose I would have to print it out if I needed to use it to vote. Our printer is dead so I would have to take it to a print place to get a copy and pay for that. And I’m not sure that kind of copy will even be appropriate, I maybe need a copy sent directly from the county where I got married. It’s all fairly confusing. This is going to be a huge mess if that bill passes.
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Scout said on April 24, 2025 at 5:55 pm
Deborah, I found out that to actually be able to use my Marriage/Divorce certs they had to be notarized with the embossed seal. If you have a passport you shouldn’t need them to vote, but if you need them for any other reason, maybe verify the notary requirement.
I love Sandman’s face! What a beauty.
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tajalli said on April 24, 2025 at 6:08 pm
Deborah, you’re quite right about a PDF being inadequate; official birth/marriage certificates have embossed seals, some sort of gold leaf or clamping tool impression. When I got my Real ID, original physical paper documents had to be presented, even deeds or rental agreements, no copies. So glad I resisted the urge to formally change my name. Providing you a pdf seems rather like passive non-compliance to create another hurdle.
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Deborah said on April 24, 2025 at 6:34 pm
Of course you have to have an official embossed document, how much more complicated can they make it for married women who changed their names, to vote. None of this is necessary, it’s all so ridiculous, obviously it’s to keep people from voting, especially women. I don’t need to get that document for anything else that I can possibly think of and since I already have a passport I’m not going to go through anymore shit to get the official marriage certificate. I hope to god this bill doesn’t pass.
LB used to have a passport but it has expired, we’re getting her one as soon as possible. Her name hasn’t changed and we have her birth certificate, but it’s always good to have a passport. But that will probably take extra long to get now that they’ve fucked up the government agencies involved in getting one. This is all just chaos for no reason except for vile evilness.
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