I guess spring is almost here. St. Patrick’s Day is Tuesday, Sports Connections today was all about the NCAA tournament, the Oscars are tonight, we’re in Daylight Saving Time and I didn’t fall asleep after lunch today, even though it was huge. (Culver’s. I regret nothing. Well, maybe the chocolate shake. Defense: I had just come from a 2K yard swim, and that is HONGRY work.)
Most of you will read this after the Oscars. I only made one prediction on my 2026 Bingo card, that “One Battle After Another” would win best picture, but I fear it will be shut out by “Sinners,” or maybe “Hamnet.” I’ve seen “Sinners.” It was fine, but OBAA was better, in my opinion. I am not a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Sciences, so my opinion is a fart in the wind.
I suppose most of you saw that Metro Detroit made the news last week, when a pissed-off Lebanese immigrant drove through the front door of a synagogue preschool and exchanged gunfire with the security guards before shooting himself in the head. The first stories noted that he’d been recently divorced, and unnamed family members had been killed by Israeli missiles in recent days. As I sad more than once after learning this news, an explanation is not an excuse. Today, the Israelis claimed his brother was a member of Hezbollah.
I think we can all agree it was a tragedy, even though no children were harmed and one security guard suffered a broken leg. Violence begets violence.
And what’s happening in the other big news of recent days? The president is asking our allies — do we still have any? I mean, besides Russia? — to help escort oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz, an act so cheeky it would be funny if it weren’t so pathetic. “You! Get over here and clean up my mess!,” etc.
This NYT story on the death of the Giving Pledge — a briefly trendy push for the mega-wealthy to give half their net worth to nonprofit causes — is interesting. When I did election work in 2020, in particular the verification of absentee ballot requests in Detroit, I had a brand-new laptop to work on, which might have been purchased with the money pledged by Mark Zuckerberg’s foundation. Alas, the idea of protecting free and fair elections is now BOR-ing, and Zuck has taken his money elsewhere. Bezos built a yacht so vulgar it requires a second yacht to follow it around with the toys and helipad. I hope that laptop still works for someone in Detroit, somewhere.
Meanwhile, the president’s toady on a federal arts commission also wants to replace the White House columns with something fancier. Probably gilded, too.
Alan says, “I don’t want to pay $5 a gallon for gas, but I’d happily do it if it means the end of this.” I’ve never agreed more.
Meanwhile, the U.P is right now getting anywhere from one to four FEET of snow, and a blizzard to boot. I can’t wait to see the pictures.
OK, then! On to the Irish takeover of the Dakota Inn! Happy St. Paddy’s Day, and let’s get through this week without a nuke going off somewhere.
Deborah said on March 15, 2026 at 5:26 pm
According to Krugman, gas could get higher than $5, he didn’t say that it absolutely will but it could depending on how long this goes on. I hope this is the end of trump, but of course, he manages to get away with stuff that no one thinks he will, so who knows.
Plus, Kushner is making off like a bandit, they all are.
Good god, 4 feet of snow!!
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Dexter Friend said on March 15, 2026 at 6:16 pm
Tom Friedman also predicted a massive increase in gasoline pricing.
I am now in the grouping in which gas prices do not hurt me; I am retired and no longer must buy so much gasoline, but I hate to see so many hurt by this. We got through the days of Covid19 when I paid $95 to fill my minivan. Maybe this won’t last so long.
I suffered this afternoon watching my Wolverines lose to a tough Boilermakers team.
Purdue was pre-season number 1, went south for like 6 weeks, but now look very good. Right now it looks like Duke is favored to win it all.
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alex said on March 15, 2026 at 6:36 pm
Just made corned beef and cabbage for family dinner, and of course everyone’s late and I’m tired of trying to keep it warm at this point. And the winds are whipping up again. On Friday the windstorm took out a tree on my property and from the way things are swaying right now there could be more casualties.
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Heather said on March 15, 2026 at 8:06 pm
I ride my bike 95% of the time so not many worries about gas except for my heating bill, sigh.
Leaving the gym yesterday it was actually snowing a bit, and the woman in front of me said, “Oh, are those snowflakes, or ashes from nuclear winter?” Things continue to be grim.
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Julie Robinson said on March 15, 2026 at 8:38 pm
We bought an electric car this summer, and our son got a hybrid pickup, so I guess we’ll be okay. But I know a lot of people who were barely scraping by, and don’t have any more places to cut. And every single policy enacted by this administration hurts them more.
So, we’re all watching the Oscars but I haven’t seen a single one of the nominated movies. I am officially an old fart.
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Jeff Gill said on March 15, 2026 at 8:45 pm
Supper was one scoop of today’s flavor of the day at Culver’s on 96th St. in Indy, caramel turtle. I regret nothing.
Conan is a famously nice guy, but this Oscars ain’t funny. Now Billy Crystal is going to make us cry…
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Brandon said on March 15, 2026 at 9:28 pm
In some areas of Hawaii, it’s already a penny shy of $5 per gallon.
https://www.gasbuddy.com/gasprices/hawaii/hawaii/1530
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Suzanne said on March 15, 2026 at 10:19 pm
I am watching the Oscars, too. I have seen Hamnet & Frankenstein but they aren’t winning much. They were both quite well done. Seems like the winners are the blood and gore shoot ‘em up movies. The clothing choices seem less strange than some years.
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alex said on March 15, 2026 at 10:54 pm
Conan was about as bland and boring as I’ve ever seen. When Jimmy Kimmel came out to present an award he threw the kind of barbs we’ve come to expect at this show and he should have hosted it. He wasn’t at all shy about this political moment whereas Conan looked like he was under strict orders to play it too safe.
We’re about to get walloped with a line of storms heading our way. The local news kept interrupting the program with severe thunderstorms and tornado warnings coming this way at 65 MPH.
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Sherri said on March 16, 2026 at 12:30 am
Gas is $4.64 at Costco here, $4.99 and up everywhere else.
I would think that Iran would want to keep the Strait of Hormuz closed a good long while to make it clear that attacking them is a very bad idea. Of course, everyone but Trump and his clown shoe wearing toadies have known this for decades.
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ROGirl said on March 16, 2026 at 5:39 am
I thought Conan’s remark about renaming the Sony Theater to Has a Small Penis Theater was pretty, pretty funny.
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David C said on March 16, 2026 at 6:02 am
I work from home and 95% of what we need is within five miles. We buy enough at Meijer that we use our mPerks to get a dollar a gallon off of the one tank of gas we use in a month. Still, I wish we had bought a Prius rather than an Outback.
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Icarus said on March 16, 2026 at 9:47 am
My wife’s parents had a hybrid (I think they leased it). Rather than keep it, they got an ICE minivan. MIL said it was because this would likely be the last new car she would ever buy. I’m sure Fox News influenced the decision to forgo electric or hybrid.
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Dorothy said on March 16, 2026 at 11:03 am
I saw five of the nominated films and I’m glad One Battle won. It was very good. Freaky a little bit but compelling and intense and not overly predictable. Hamnet would’ve been a good choice, too. I did not care for Sinners. Train Dreams made us cry and it was also excellent.
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Deborah said on March 16, 2026 at 11:30 am
I’ve seen none of the movies that were up for awards, this is probably the first year I’ve not seen any of them. When there’s so much rotten stuff happening in the world daily, it’s been exhausting. I wish we had taken more time off to be distracted by a good movie for a bit.
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ROGirl said on March 16, 2026 at 11:52 am
I ended up seeing quite a few: Train Dreams, One Battle After Another, Bugonia (weird), Sinners (OK), Song Sung Blue, Hamnet. They provide brief respites from the daily shit show.
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Mark P said on March 16, 2026 at 3:07 pm
Regular here is around $3.35-3.50, but diesel has been $5.00 for a while. That will have an effect on the price of pretty much everything. I had a Toyota hybrid minivan for a while. It averaged 40+ mpg around town.
The military war game everything. Surely they have gamed war with Iran, and surely they included Iran closing Hormuz. And surely someone tried to tell Trump that. Surely?
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Julie Robinson said on March 16, 2026 at 3:09 pm
What’s an ICE minivan? Is it just a big monster of a vehicle in black? Ours is pretty large so we can get the wheelchair scooter in. The tax credits ended last year, which is the other reason we moved up our purchase. Our 2014 Honda CRV still has many years of life in it, and we passed it on to our daughter. In turn she passed her 2006 Civic on to someone down on their luck. It needed this and that but only had 70,000 miles. It first belonged to my mom, who lived in a small town and hardly ever drove it.
We pretty much have always had friends or family needing a car so we’ve only had to take out a classified to sell once. That tells you how long ago it was, a classified. How do people sell them now, Facebook Marketplace? Does anyone still use Craigslist? Nextdoor? From what I’ve seen they’re full of scammers.
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Icarus said on March 16, 2026 at 3:50 pm
Julie Robinson @ 18: Internal Combustion Engine (uses gasoline) vs Electric Vehicle. I know, a certain agency messed up that acronym and word for the foreseeable future.
I sold my Honda Element through Carvana. There is also Carmax. I’m not sure how their business model works. We got $5k for a 2008 car. I have to assume they could do some minor cosmetic repairs and turn it around for a profit.
I kinda miss the car but I was putting so much money into it each year that it just wasn’t worth keeping.
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Mark P said on March 16, 2026 at 6:13 pm
I sold the Toyota Sienna I mentioned earlier through Carvana. I got essentially what I paid for it a year before. I used to use Autotrader to sell my old cars.
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Jakash said on March 16, 2026 at 6:34 pm
“I guess spring is almost here.” Uh, “almost” being the key for now. We don’t have 4 feet of snow in Chicago, but we did get a couple inches, and it “feels like” 12° at the moment. The “average high” is supposed to be 48° at this point. Harrumph!
I love Culver’s and am surprised and happy that a few have shown up around here.
Gas at our local Costco costs 35 cents a gallon more than it did 10 days ago.
Oscars: I thought the show was pretty good. Conan is hit or miss and enjoys putting himself in skits a lot more than I enjoy watching them, but I thought many of his jokes were funny. And the “Casablanca” send-up with Sterling K. Brown was an exception to what I just wrote — I thought that was swell.
I was glad they saved 25 minutes or so by not playing all 5 nominated songs, as they used to. Wow, the “In Memoriam” thing was certainly the most extensive I’ve ever seen, and rightfully so, given some of the megastars that are no longer with us.
I agree with the proprietress about Best Picture. I was definitely rooting for “One Battle After Another” and was delighted that Paul Thomas Anderson won 2 Oscars after having been shut out up until now. “Sinners” was brilliantly executed, I thought, but I have zero interest in vampire nonsense, in general, so that second half was disappointing to me.
Jessie Buckley and Michael B. Jordan were both very deserving winners of the top acting prizes. I feel just a tad sorry for Leo DiCaprio — he’s so consistently good that I think he’s somewhat taken for granted, but that role was a hoot and he did it very well!
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Dorothy said on March 16, 2026 at 8:05 pm
Have any of you read this? Jesus Mary and Joseph ….!
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/16/us/politics/trump-neal-dunn-terminal-diagnosis-johnson.html?unlocked_article_code=1.T1A.gIEf.LyVNhhQsxR4m&smid=nytcore-ios-share
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Jeff Gill said on March 16, 2026 at 8:23 pm
Hat tip to “Sinners,” but may I recommend Ryan Coogler & Michael B. Jordan’s first teaming: “Fruitvale Station,” which deserves more exposure. I forget how old it is now, but it’s not dated at all.
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Julie Robinson said on March 16, 2026 at 8:29 pm
Apparently Sinners has a deep theological message, but I can’t bear gore or violence, so I will wait for our resident theologian to watch it and tell me.
How about Babs finding the courage to sing in public again I order to honor her friend Bob Redford? Her voice is gone and you bet she knows it, but she did it anyway. She’s so easy to poke fun at, and I truly respect this.
Internal Combustion Engine? This is me, slinking away.
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alex said on March 17, 2026 at 10:05 am
I used Facebook Marketplace to sell a car last year and found a serious buyer, so it’s not a bad way to go. Carvana and the like will lowball you because they need to turn a profit to make it worth their while, but if you sell on Marketplace you can get your asking price. It does require some patience. An earnest buyer will be more than willing to go out of their way to prove it. My buyer brought a check made out to both me and her from the bank that had approved her loan and I had her sign a sales contract and everything went through just fine.
The car in question was a 2007 Pontiac Solstice GXP convertible and my buyer came all the way from metro Cleveland. They’re a rare enough car that people are willing to pay top dollar for them, and it’s a good thing that Facebook casts a wide net as there was zero local interest. I had already replaced that car with a new Buick crossover and hadn’t used it as a trade-in because the dealer would have given me so little for it.
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Sherri said on March 17, 2026 at 12:39 pm
Joe Kent, who is an absolute loony toons conspiracy theorist white supremacist MAGAt who ran for Congress in southwestern Washington twice, has resigned from the Trump administration over the war with Iran. He was director of the National Counterterrorism Center.
He said Iran posed no immediate threat to the US, and blamed Israel for the war.
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/joe-kent-resigns-says-iran-posed-no-imminent-threat/
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Julie Robinson said on March 17, 2026 at 5:43 pm
Popping in to say Happy St. Patrick’s Day, always celebrated since my great grandparents came from County Carlow. I’ve been listening to a fair amount of Celtic music through the day, just concluding with childhood favorites The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem. As a kid I never picked up the hostile and subversive tones of these traditional songs, but after visiting I can never forget that England oppressed Ireland for hundreds of years, and that no one in Ireland forgets it either.
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Brandon said on March 17, 2026 at 7:17 pm
I forget how old it is now, but it’s not dated at all.
Fruitvale Station is from 2013.
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Dorothy said on March 17, 2026 at 9:29 pm
Speaking of Ireland etc, I just watched season 1 of Peaky Blinders recently, and saw the first episode of season 2. If this has been discussed here before I did not participate because I’d not seen it. Are there fans of the series among us? Thoughts?
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Deborah said on March 17, 2026 at 11:00 pm
Today was the primary election day in IL. I’m happy, I voted for the current Lt. Gov of IL for the senate seat Durbin is retiring from and she won, I think the chances are quite good that she’ll win in Nov over a Republican, unless they cheat. I was expecting the guy with the Indian name to win because he was projected to, a moderate Dem.
We had friends from St. Louis and Taos, NM over for dinner tonight, we had Italian food, we would have no idea what or how to make it if we tried to have Irish.
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Suzanne said on March 18, 2026 at 10:19 am
This is my go-to corned beef & cabbage St Paddy’s Day recipe. It is soooo good but does require a long cooking time.
https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1020074-corned-beef-and-cabbage#notes_section
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Peter said on March 18, 2026 at 11:09 am
I read an item about James Carville yesterday, who said he wouldn’t be surprised if Trump walked away from the job because it’s all crashing down around him and leave the mess to Vance, and I had a terrible thought: what if he DOES quit after the midterms, Vance screws up as only he could, and then Trump runs again in 2028 for that third term that he thinks he so mightily deserves? I wouldn’t put it past that twerp.
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alex said on March 18, 2026 at 11:31 am
Suzanne, I made the NYT pressure cooker version on Sunday and I was so pleased with the result that it’ll be my go-to from now on. This was the first time I ever braised a corned beef brisket in wine and I don’t know why it hadn’t occurred to me before that it’s the way to go.
Peter, I doubt Trump would walk away. I believe that he thinks he can keep himself immune from prosecution indefinitely as long as he stays right where he is, and that sowing ever more chaos will hobble any efforts to bring him to justice. This includes trying to upend the midterms, at which he might just succeed. Much as I’d like to share in Carville’s rosy optimism, he doesn’t have a great record of predictions panning out in our favor.
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Dave said on March 18, 2026 at 11:42 am
I read an article about Vance yesterday from The Atlantic that lays out the argument that Vance is learning what Mike Pence found out and being subservient to the Orange one never turns out as one may have planned.
James Carville, while entertaining, seems to be wrong a lot. I remember when Howard Stern was predicting the Orange one would resign, this from the many interviews he’d had with him years earlier.
Nothing to do with the topic but for the handful among us who had any relationship with Ohio University, I saw this photo essay, which didn’t teach me anything I didn’t already know but thought it might be of interest. Yes, I used tinyurl and cut down the long link. https://tinyurl.com/59mjdjhc
I guess that must be why I was sent straight to moderation.
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Dexter Friend said on March 18, 2026 at 1:05 pm
Mrs. Vivek Ramaswamy is flooding my screens with ads about what a great daddy her man is, and so, should be governor here. They can’t use his voice as he sounds like Don Adams’ cartoon penguin in the 60s. He is a goddam MAGA to the bone sycophant Republican. But this is Ohio, and the electorate voted for Trump, so we here in Ohio must spread the word: no Ramaswamy or his wife or his children. No Republican in Columbus. HELP
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Icarus said on March 18, 2026 at 1:22 pm
I don’t know if I said it here or somewhere else buy my “theory” is that the plan is to keep Trump in office until whatever the date in 2026 is (Jan 21?) that lets Vance have two years finishing the Tangerine Palpatine term, then being eligible for two more elected terms.
I suspect they will pull Rumplethinskin aside and tell him that he either resigns or they use the 25th amendment on him. Or if they really want playback for the way he treated all of them these years, they will absolutely help the democrats impeach him.
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ROGirl said on March 18, 2026 at 2:04 pm
He’s like one of those men who kill their entire family before turning the gun on themselves. He’ll pull down and destroy as much as he can, maybe having someone launch a nuke or two. He definitely won’t off himself, maybe he has an arrangement with Mohammed bin Salman to be whisked out of the country at the appropriate moment.
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Deborah said on March 18, 2026 at 2:10 pm
I watched a podcast last night since I couldn’t sleep, it was eye opening. Tim miller of the Bulwark interviewed Ashley St. Claire, a 26 year old former MAGA Tweeter and Turning Points woman who had one of Musk’s babies and has completely turned around and is out of that realm now. Who knows if she’s sincere or if she’s looking for a new sugar daddy? She was very articulate and smart, at least she seemed so on the podcast. Musk is currently suing her for custody of the kid as well as Grime’s kids. St. Clair was in her early 20s when she got mixed up with Musk who was of course a middle aged man already. Here’s a link, it was interesting https://www.thebulwark.com/p/ashley-st-clair-and-cameron-kasky
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Sherri said on March 18, 2026 at 2:37 pm
Trump’s not going to walk away. Have you seen how his wealth has increased in his second term? That doesn’t even count the money he’s grabbed from seizing Venezuela’s oil and stashed in Qatar, or the money sent to his presidential library fund which has been dissolved, or billions pledged to his Board of Peace.
If he walks away, are people going to keep buying his crypto coin? How will he seize Cuba and Greenland and Mexico if he’s not President?
He can’t just tear things down and build monuments to his name (which he’s trademarked along the way) if he’s not President.
Sure, he’s got a mess in Iran, but he’s still making too much money as President. Soon, he’ll claim he was always against war in Iran, from the beginning.
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Jeff Gill said on March 19, 2026 at 9:03 am
We have always been at war with Eastasia.
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