I have about 20 minutes this morning, so let’s get moving. More Morocco, anyone? :::cocks ear to room, hears silence::: OK, then!
Storage lockers at the port, Essaouira:
This was basically a composition exercise. That one, or this one?
Can’t decide. I’m leaning toward the first.
We’ve been back for two weeks, and I suppose we’re fully re-integrated now. Last night I watched the last thing that dropped on Netflix in our absence — “El Camino,” the Breaking Bad movie. I liked it. I thought it struck the right balance between playful fan-pleasing, a rewarding extended encore for Aaron Paul and just being an OK movie. I’m thinking, again, how much I love Vince Gilligan’s work, and want to see more of it, but I guess “Better Call Saul” is still months away. Sigh.
As the credits were rolling, my phone beeped: The Anonymous book dropped, and oh my stars and garters, it turns out the president is a venal, greedy, petulant (add 1,000 more unflattering adjectives) bastard. WHO KNEW?!?
And I’m putting my bet, today, on Kellyanne Conway as the author. Someone make a case for someone else, but something about the dad-running-around-with-no-pants stuff sounded like it came out of a female brain.
My heart has hardened against every one of the adults in the room. John Kelly, just recently, lamented that if he were still in charge, the president wouldn’t be facing impeachment:
“I said, whatever you do — and we were still in the process of trying to find someone to take my place — I said whatever you do, don’t hire a ‘yes man,’ someone who won’t tell you the truth — don’t do that. Because if you do, I believe you will be impeached,” Kelly said Saturday at the newspaper’s political conference in Sea Island, Ga.
Kelly, a retired Marine Corps general who was chief of staff from July 2017 to January 2019, said he told the president he needed someone to keep him within the bounds of his authority to avoid impeachment. Kelly said he believed the president wouldn’t be facing an impeachment inquiry had he stayed in the job, a thinly veiled shot at Mick Mulvaney, the acting chief of staff who replaced Kelly.
“It pains me to see what’s going on,” Kelly said, according to the newspaper.
It pains him. Poor baby. In other words, if he were still in charge, everything would be unfolding more or less exactly the way it has for the last four years, which he presumably is OK with. So fuck that guy. Fuck all the guys, plus the gals, and save a special one for Kellyanne Conway, grifter queen extraordinaire.
When this is all over, I do look forward to Stephanie Grisham’s next drunk-driving arrest.
Twenty minutes is nearly up. Gotta hit the showers, maybe slurp up some more coffee. Have a good weekend, all.
Deborah said on November 8, 2019 at 8:34 am
Well if it is Kellyanne she’s got a lot of explaining to do. I thought that pantless passage was odd.
We can’t get rid of Trump fast enough. And Lordy nearly all of the Republicans too.
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ROGirl said on November 8, 2019 at 8:41 am
Definitely the first picture.
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basset said on November 8, 2019 at 8:47 am
Definitely the second. Lines on the left are stronger, less distraction on the right.
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Deborah said on November 8, 2019 at 9:10 am
My husband went to that Arthur Laffer speech on Tuesday night and hoo boy it was a doozy. He described Laffer as a little pudgy guy with dyed hair and wearing makeup, and all he did was talk about taxes, how bad they are and are responsible for everything bad in the world. He said there were about 100 people there, about 20 of them were women, and when Laffer mentioned Elizabeth Warren the women hissed in unison, he said it was weird, almost like they had rehearsed it. He had a lot more to say about it, but that was the strangest part.
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alex said on November 8, 2019 at 9:31 am
I like the first picture because of the birds. I like the second for the more detailed view of the doors.
Pence was a suspect when the anonymous letter was published because it made use of Pence’s favorite word multiple times — “lodestar.” Kellyanne must have really had it in for him.
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nancy said on November 8, 2019 at 9:43 am
No way is Pence smart enough for that. I just don’t see it.
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Jim G said on November 8, 2019 at 10:00 am
I like the second better. The near/far contrast is striking, and the doors have enough detail, texture, and visual interest to make it work. But it depends on what you want the subject of the photo to be. In the first, my eye is drawn to the tower in the background. In the second, it’s the door.
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Jeff Borden said on November 8, 2019 at 10:11 am
No one associated with this clusterfuck presidency should be welcome in polite company once they are Roto-Rootered out of the White House. It “pains” me to see W., Cheney, Rice and the rest of the scoundrels behind the Iraq war living normal lives and accepting speaking gigs after a needless invasion that killed hundreds of thousands of innocents and upended an entire region. They should be shunned. A future that includes dickweeds like Mike Dense, Mick Mulvaney, Stephen Miller, Kellyanne Conway and Mike Pompeo pontificating on my TV is one I don’t want to endure.
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Suzanne said on November 8, 2019 at 10:14 am
Posted this at the end of the last thread but posting it again
This review pretty much says it all
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/07/books/review/a-warning-anonymous-book-review-trump.html
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ROGirl said on November 8, 2019 at 10:37 am
Kellyanne seems like too public a figure to be the author, especially given her unwavering defenses of everything the WH does.
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Sherri said on November 8, 2019 at 10:41 am
It “pains” me to see children in cages and families separated, a policy John Kelly endorses. We didn’t need a book by an anonymous insider to tell us who these people are; they’ve been telling us who they are since they stepped on stage.
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Heather said on November 8, 2019 at 11:15 am
I like the first. It hews a little more to the “rule of three”–the doors, the path, the wall–and the anchors really, ahem, anchor the image.
I didn’t hear about this book so I’m off to spent another half hour on Twitter I guess?
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Dorothy said on November 8, 2019 at 11:22 am
I’m a fan of the first one too. I like the closer view of the rusty thing-a-ma-jigs in the foreground. And bonus: birds!
I think Anonymous threw in ‘lodestar’ (Pence) and some phrases associated with Kirsjten Nielsen to throw off the scent of his or her real identity. But knowing who this person really is would give their stories much more credibility. I’m not a big fan of anonymous work, but in this case it sure reinforces what many of us already knew was happening behind the scenes. I’m sure it’s all much worse than my imagination can summon.
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Scout said on November 8, 2019 at 11:36 am
Both shots are amazing, but my favorite is the first. I like the way it divides into thirds and I love the birds.
I’m inclined to think it is Kellyanne too. She is like a caricature of an evil minion, and yet her husband calls out the lies and criminal activity on a daily basis. I think they are doing a good cop/bad cop routine while profiting nicely from her access to the carnage.
Things are looking grim for Pounce too. I know the goppers will never allow President Pelosi; maybe that’s why they keep pretending there is nothing to see here, move along, move along.
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Jenine said on November 8, 2019 at 11:55 am
I like the first shot because there’s more to discover in it the longer you look.
I am not noble enough to stop hoping this is a deeply unpleasant time for DJT.
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Jakash said on November 8, 2019 at 12:06 pm
Well, the way-back machine on the right side of the blog has finally rolled around to the Day of Infamy, 2016-version, and one of the more depressing quotes in nn.c history: “Michigan is not in play, and if Hillary doesn’t win by at least three points here, I’ll buy you all a beer.”
The proprietress could have bought each of us a brewery and I don’t think it would have done much to assuage the nightmare that that day ushered in for most of us, much of the country and a fair share of the world. (Certain pilots excluded, needless to say.)
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Peter said on November 8, 2019 at 1:04 pm
Picture No. 1.
WaPo: “Book by ‘Anonymous’ describes Trump as cruel, inept, and a danger to the nation”. Well, what a surprise. I had no idea.
Seriously, I don’t know who’s the biggest douchebag out of this group, as there are SO many deserving candidates, but John Kelly makes the shortlist. You’re a retired general, your son has died in the service, and you sell yourself out to this. He should be ashamed of himself.
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Deborah said on November 8, 2019 at 1:39 pm
I’m for photo number 2, because you get to see the interesting rustic detail of the doors more clearly while you still get the overall view of the diminishing perspective down the walkway and the building as the period at the end. It makes that the overall simple subject matter instead of complicating it with birds and such. IMHO, less is more.
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Sherri said on November 8, 2019 at 2:02 pm
I like photo 2 better, because I think the doors are the most interesting feature and I can see them better.
Kara Swisher has been saying for some time that Bloomberg was going to get in the race, but it puzzles me. What are these billionaires thinking? Sure, I get that they think they’d do a great job, but why do they think people would vote for them? In an world of extreme income inequality, do they honestly think “vote for me, I’m rich, but I don’t hate everybody” is compelling?
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Deborah said on November 8, 2019 at 4:49 pm
We took a bracing walk up the lakeshore and I’ve never seen the lake water level as high as it is now. What has caused that? Did Chicago have that much more rainfall this summer and fall? It’s about 33 degrees out there now, not too windy so not terrible.
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David C. said on November 8, 2019 at 4:58 pm
How does Bloomberg think he has any chance when he’ll get nearly zero support from African Americans? The dude was just as enthusiastic for stop and frisk brown people as Ghouliani.
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Alan Stamm said on November 8, 2019 at 6:03 pm
Late ballot for second photo for the same reasons as other keen-eyed aesthetes. But no wrong choice ’cause it’s clearly true that you can’t take a bad picture in Morocco.
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alex said on November 8, 2019 at 6:09 pm
For what it’s worth, the media glow surrounding a real self-made billionaire whom everyone knows is a genius without his having to tell us so is going to humiliate the shit out of Dolt 45. I doubt Bloomberg has what it takes to unite the various Dem factions, but he’s going to make this race interesting. I was dismayed with the news of his entry at first, but frankly I’d vote for him if I ended up having to choose between Bloomberg and Trump (or Bloomberg and any Republican). He’s a straight-shooter and not a double-talker and that counts for a lot in the current political environment.
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Jakash said on November 8, 2019 at 6:28 pm
I don’t want Bloomberg to run for president, personally. Though, like Alex, I’d certainly vote for him if it came down to it. But when a guy like him sees that the mayor of freaking *South Bend* is evidently a top-tier candidate, it’s not too surprising to me that he’d think a 3-term mayor of Noo Yawk might as well give it a shot. It doesn’t seem at all the same to me as Howard Schultz deciding to go from never being elected to anything to thinking he’d start with running for prez.
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Dexter Friend said on November 8, 2019 at 6:42 pm
My lifelong pal, Bud, told me about “El Camino” so I watched it, liked it, and told him how “Breaking Bad” irritated me for all the excessive commercials, or seemingly so. Things piqued interest—commercial. Then he told me…he never saw an episode until it appeared on Netflix, where of course they cut all the ads out. And I sort of sighed *oh, gee*.
Deborah, have you seen the erosion across the lake? It’s historic. Now up north , heavy snows.
Bloomberg entering, possibly anyway, sort of messed up my mind, as I was blind-sided. He’s worth somewhere around $54B to $56B , is way over 70, and wants to be in the mix of running the world. Trump’s own appointees are caving, one and two at a time. The President can’t use his office to benefit his own campaign with threats and holding a sword over other world leaders as it’s not legal. He’s finding out. I hope Trump gets thrown to the curb and Bill Weld gets nominated and Mayor Pete beats him to a pulp.
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Jakash said on November 8, 2019 at 6:54 pm
Deborah, the water level has been high all summer. As of today, the precipitation for the year is at 46.14 in. The average for this date is 32.21 in.
“We’re seeing some of the highest water levels in recorded history on the Great Lakes, and that’s the result of very wet weather experienced over the last several years”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2019/11/08/great-lakes-water-levels-have-swung-record-lows-record-highs-heres-why/
On Aug. 1, the Tribune published a photographic tour of the effect on some of the Chicago beaches:
“Each of the Great Lakes has broken record monthly highs, except for lakes Michigan and Huron, measured together because they are connected at the Straits of Mackinac and maintain the same water level. Still, Michigan and Huron — which have the greatest variation between their record high and low — have surged nearly 6 feet since January 2013.”
https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/environment/ct-cb-lake-michigan-high-water-levels-beaches-htmlstory.html
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Brandon said on November 8, 2019 at 8:18 pm
Who’s That Girl?
Also the title of Madonna’s flawed-but-fun screwball comedy.
—
Tulsi Gabbard says she won’t run on a third-party ticket, and she’s not running for her Congressional seat. It’s the Democratic nomination or bust for her.
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basset said on November 8, 2019 at 8:37 pm
Been car shopping, first time in awhile and the newer of our two cars is a 2011. A lot has changed since then. Drove a 2020 Subaru today and it was like sitting in a damn spaceship, big touch screen in the middle of the dash controlled everything and I don’t want to think what kind of expense would result from any problems with it. Sat there awhile and poked at little cartoon pictures… just show me how to turn the heater on, OK?
And deer season, or at least the first part that I’m involved in, starts half an hour before dawn tomorrow. Gonna be cold, too… builds character.
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on November 8, 2019 at 8:38 pm
First picture.
Jon Huntsman.
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alex said on November 8, 2019 at 9:04 pm
My affinity for the first picture has to do with curvature of the birds’ wings somewhat echoed by the ornamentation on the doors; also the fade of the blue of the sky in that picture works better with the fade of the doors.
Nancy has always beaten up on herself as not a good photographer but I disagree. I think she captures things unconsciously that are amazing and she has a very good sense of composition.
Lake Michigan was in some kind of cyclical high when I moved to Chicago in the ’80s. LSD was flooding. The inner drive was even flooding in places. The Kennedy was flooding at the Addison overpass right up to the rafters, or whatever you’d call them. High water was seeking its level and wreaking some fucking havoc during adverse weather. On the other hand, during the ’90s I saw huge annual erosion on the Michigan side of the beach/dunes even though the water level was much lower then. So not sure what’s baseline normal around that lake because destruction seems to be an ever present phenomenon all around.
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Deborah said on November 8, 2019 at 9:14 pm
What question is Jon Huntsman the answer to?
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alex said on November 8, 2019 at 9:23 pm
Who’s seen Mitt Romney in his magic underpants and wasn’t vaginal-receptive?
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Dave said on November 8, 2019 at 10:33 pm
Dexter, I’m like your pal, I never watched Breaking Bad until I started watching Better Call Saul and thought Saul might make more sense if I started watching BB. Found it on Netflix and watched them all. Watched El Camino the other evening via my laptop, my wife doesn’t care anything about shows like that, blood and killing.
We just retired our 2011 Honda Accord a month ago and bought a 2019 Outback, had to be one of the last new ones in the entire state of Florida, or so they told us. So far, so good. Bassett, that screen on the 20 is much larger, one of the things we didn’t much care for.
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basset said on November 8, 2019 at 11:12 pm
I like having actual knobs for radio tuning and volume, aside from that it’s all graphics and menus, which I don’t care for at all. Mrs. B doesn’t drive any more, so it’s all up to me now. and an extra sticker listing bullshit they want to charge us $1495 for doesn’t make me want to buy either… the usual “protection package” of some wax and a can of scotch-gard now includes a fingernail scratch protection panel around the door handles, at least they said there was one but we surely couldn’t see it.
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Sherri said on November 9, 2019 at 12:32 am
The thing about vote by mail is, the ballots take a while to come in, and even though the returns on election night usually tell the story, sometimes, they don’t. I thought my 24 year old Muslim woman running for city council was too far behind to catch up after election night, even though she would likely do better than her seventy-something white male opponent. Well, I was wrong. As of 8 pm tonight, she has pulled into the lead, by 19 votes. There are still about 300 ballots to count, and we won’t get those until Tuesday. If the final results are within about 75 votes, an automatic recount is triggered.
Kshama Sawant looked done for on election night, and has moved into the lead, and the affirmative action initiative is now passing, barely.
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Sherri said on November 9, 2019 at 12:34 am
Oops, R-88 is failing again. King County may not be enough.
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on November 9, 2019 at 8:43 am
I’m pretty confident that Anonymous will prove to be Jon Huntsman.
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Connie said on November 9, 2019 at 9:24 am
The shoreline on the Michigan side has been a mess all year. Very little available beach anywhere. Undercut houses, dunes, and roads. The popular Fishtown docks in Leland are drowning.
People often run down the back side of the Sleeping Bear Dunes, can’t climb back, and need to be rescued. They can no longer be rescued by an ATV coming via beach. They can only be rescued by boat. Those who need to be rescued are charged a fee — for their stupidity in ignoring all the warning signs — and the boat rescue fee is much larger than the beach rescue cost.
Swimming has been dangerous up and down the coast with wave and riptide warnings. Red flags are out.
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Deborah said on November 9, 2019 at 12:35 pm
Wouldn’t Huntsman have spent a lot of his time in Russia while he was the ambassador? Would he have been around Trump often enough to observe the things that have been described in the excerpts that have come out? Or did he rely on and report what others have said to him about Trump’s behavior?
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Deborah said on November 9, 2019 at 7:42 pm
I may get creamed for saying this, but even if Bloomberg somehow manages to get the Dem nomination for president, I’ll vote for him. He is the lesser of two evils when it comes to Trump, for sure. I certainly hope he’s not the one, I honestly don’t think he will be but if he is, I’ll vote for him and I will work for him to win (but of course only if he’s nominated). I never thought I’d say that but here I am.
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Dexter Friend said on November 10, 2019 at 12:00 am
basset , I am the same about cars. Distracted driving kills, so they put big screens up front. And the radio knob, so easy it was. You would get muscle memory and could tune in stations blindly within just a few days. Same for heater and a/c controls…well, we mostly had no a/c for our early years…so easy to operate.
Well, my son-in-law’s base airport changed ; he now flies out of Palm Beach International, executive jets…and a mile and a half from the airport is Mar-O-Lago. Big deal, huh?
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David C. said on November 10, 2019 at 6:38 am
Auto makers are putting Jesus screens in their cars because Tesla does and because no stupid idea goes uncopied. I don’t think they’ll be especially expensive to fix in the out years because the knobs and switches in today’s cars just send a signal to the body computer which is the expensive part of the system. Screens are pretty cheap. I don’t like touch screens from a human factors point of view. I see videos of Teslaphiles poking at their screen to find something that’s buried three screen levels down. They say you get used to it and don’t even look anymore. I don’t buy that for most people. So they’re probably going to end up killing people, but I guess that doesn’t matter because the tech dude-bros love it.
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Deborah said on November 10, 2019 at 8:58 am
I like the term “Jesus screens”. Since we got rid of our car in Chicago whenever we go to uncle J’s we rent one. We’ve had all kinds of makes and models and most of them have those damn touch screens. I hate them because as the passenger I always have to figure them out as my husband is concentrating on the road. If I want to turn up the heat or whatever I have to go through a series of steps when it used to simply involve turning a knob. Irritating.
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beb said on November 10, 2019 at 3:33 pm
A tale of 2 pixs. From a composition standpoint I would prefer the first picture. The line of rooftops from the storage sheds is matched and paralleled by the top of the cement wall. Both come together close to the center of the picture. In the second picture the line of the sheds is broken and the wall comes in too high in the picture to adequateky balance the roofline on the left. However the details of the weathered doors is interesting in the second picture but that should have been the entire focus of the picture. I would have turned more towards the doors and ignored the wall. At least that’s my two cents and you know how much two cents is worth…
alex, phrases like “LSD was flooded” has whole different meaning to people don’t live in Chicago. It made me giggle.
Deborah @39: At this point voting for Trump is the moral equivalent to voting for Hitler. I’d vote for a Pet Rock — if it had a “D” after it’s name.
Our car has a mixture of knows and touchscreen. The heater is thermostat controlled and there’s a knob for that. Select for AC/heater is a push button as all the rest of the climate control panel. Only the “radio” is touch screen and in a way that’s nice because it’s easier to set tabs for different channels, switch between channels and so on. As far as I know you can’t play video on the screen. THAT would be a huge distraction. Behind the steering wheel is another screen with a mass of displays with controls on the steering wheel for what is displayed. The default is the standard speed, gas gauge, engine temp etc. That’s good enough for me so I’ve never tried to learn how to use the controls on the steering wheel.
As we approach Veteran’s Day I’m reminded of the terrible sacrifice Don, Jr has had being the son of the President of the United States and never having had to serve in the military. At least that’s what he tells us.
A Pet Rock, I tell ya, a Pet Rock is smarter than that whole family.
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LAMary said on November 10, 2019 at 6:03 pm
Beb, sounds like you have a VW. My Golf wagon has a dashboard like the one you describe.
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Brian stouder said on November 10, 2019 at 8:34 pm
Lemme just say that, to me, both photos are arresting, thanks to the beautiful blue sky but reading both.
Aside from that, lemme just say that cars are funny. Grant and I ran off to see an IMSA race at Road Atlanta last month, and rented an Impala. Back in the day, my dad was an insurance salesman, and got a new Impala company car each year, between about 1967 and 1972….so this was the first new one of those I’ve been in, in almost half a century…..and it was very impressive, indeed!
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Brian stouder said on November 10, 2019 at 8:39 pm
Make ‘but reading both’ – say ‘buttressing both’. We now return you to the blog.
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beb said on November 10, 2019 at 8:43 pm
Actually, it’s a Chevy Equinox.
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Joe kobiela said on November 10, 2019 at 10:58 pm
Dexter,
I often find myself @Palm Beach International there is a great deli across the street from Mar Largo where we pilots get lunch, ask your son in law if he knows about it, right next to the bail bondsman.
Cheers
Pilot Joe
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Deborah said on November 10, 2019 at 11:15 pm
A Bail bondsman is across the street from Mar-a-lago?
We saw The Irishman tonight and I highly recommend it. The acting was superb, just amazing. If Joe Pesce doesn’t win an academy award for best supporting actor there’s something wrong. DeNiro was fabulous, Pacino was good but not as good as Pesce and DeNiro. Even Ray Romano was fantastic. It’s a fascinating story, somewhat violent but not overly so, compared to some. Scorcese knows how to make a good movie. I was a kid and a teenager when most of the real activities happened that were depicted so it was very informative to me. Plus some of it happened in Miami and they even had a mention of a local Miami eatery chain called Lums which I remember fondly, their hotdogs were delicious, steamed in beer.
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diane said on November 11, 2019 at 12:05 am
Brian@45
My father had a 1970 Impala and I learned to drive on it in 1974. Once I learned to parallel park that thing, I could parallel park pretty much anything.
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alex said on November 11, 2019 at 5:57 am
Here’s a flashback:
https://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/a8981/carchaeology-1986-buick-riviera-introduces-the-touchscreen-15437094/
Buick introduced the first touch screen in 1986 and dropped it in 1990 because of negative customer response.
I was hoping to find a link to a review I read at the time in Car and Driver but no luck. It was the funniest damned thing I ever read. They called Buick’s T-Type Riviera “TV-Type” in the headline and said it was the first time in Car and Driver history that GM repo’d a test car when it got wind that the review wasn’t going to be positive. And it wasn’t.
GM got a heads up because the touch screen in the car loaned to Car and Driver kept fritzing out and had to be replaced multiple times. The car was unusable without it. The car also had multiple other quality control issues that the magazine said were simply unforgivable in a car at that price point, and these were the kinds of things that should never go wrong in the life of a vehicle. The most scathing parts of the review, however, were reserved for the pared-down design. The Riv had long been one of GM’s most elegant cars and a top seller, and this new rendition was just plain hideous.
As the Popular Mechanics piece notes, sales plummeted from 85K units in 1985 to almost zilch and the brand was killed off. Buick tried to revive the Riv in 1995 with a much-hyped new design but this effort also flopped.
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