‘Twas a rough night last night. Bad insomnia, probably not helped by a late dinner of Alan’s chili, but never mind that. Slept horribly, which means today is a low-effort, low-achievement day, but oh well. And I missed my morning swim. But! I managed to unload the dishwasher, drank two large glasses of water and prepared a decent lunch, so here’s hoping tomorrow will be better.
In the meantime, new music from Shadow Show here.
And proud parental moment here, via WDET-FM here in Detroit:
Audio PlayerLogrolling for my daughter out of the way, here’s one reason I slept badly: Trump’s dance party last night in Pennsylvania. It made me renew my vow, made periodically over the last few years, to not forgive any MAGAts in my extended circle, should they come groveling for mercy through the wreckage of the American republic. I know, that’s not Jesus’ way, but Jesus doesn’t have to live here, where I do, gnawing my nails to the cuticle that we might actually have four more years of this bullshit. Even if Trump loses, I expect weeks, maybe months, of civil unrest. It’s going to be ugly. My older friends remind me that the 1960s were in many ways worse, and they’re correct, but this is now. And every day, EVERY DAY, Trump is telling us who he is, and if that is who you are? Fuck off, all the way off, and don’t leave a forwarding address.
At the moment he’s being questioned by a braver soul at the Economic Club of Chicago, that is to say, braver than the limp noodle who questioned him in Detroit last week (see previous entry). If I were the “beautiful woman” he pointed to during this exchange, I’d get up, go home and take a Silkwood shower, followed by a dip in a mikvah, followed by a sage-smudging ceremony:
Trump points out a “beautiful woman” in the crowd and says to her of migrants, “they will look at you and kill you” pic.twitter.com/3r5vSEH6Vl
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 15, 2024
So you can see, it’s just not a good Tuesday. Imagine if Biden — hell, if Harris — behaved the way Trump did last night. The New York Times would be sounding klaxon horns and calling battle stations. Instead, we have this:
Donald J. Trump was about 30 minutes into a town hall Monday night in suburban Philadelphia when a medical emergency in the crowd brought the questions and answers to a halt. Moments later, he tried to get back on track, when another medical incident seemed to derail things, this time for good.
And so Mr. Trump, a political candidate known for improvisational departures, made a detour. Rather than try to restart the political program, he seemed to decide in the moment that it would be more enjoyable for all concerned — and, it appeared, for himself — to just listen to music instead.
“Known for improvisational departures” — I ask you. Grandpa is sundowning.
Later:
Mr. Trump generally returns to his planned remarks after medical issues at other events. On Monday, he seemed more uncertain how to proceed. After offering what appeared to be a closing statement and having his campaign play a James Brown song, Mr. Trump suggested taking another question or two. As the crowd cheered in approval, he said, “let’s go,” but then said he’d play “Y.M.C.A.” and send the crowd home.
But after “Y.M.C.A.” ended, Mr. Trump seemed a little perplexed. “There’s nobody leaving,” he said. “What’s going on?” The audience cheered, and so the music kept going, as Ms. Noem stood awkwardly by, and many in the audience seemed unsure about whether the event was over.
I need to take a break from this stuff. Between this, the Israelis cooking refugees in tents and the Tigers losing, there’s no reason to open the paper (literally or figuratively) this week. But I’ll try to be back one more time before the end of it.
tajalli said on October 15, 2024 at 4:43 pm
Saw that Jeff Gill had shared this video at the very bottom of the last post, started watching it and stopped. There is no way to evaluate if any of his statements are true, it’s just fantasy land as far as I can tell, let’s all move to fantasy land.
Dropped my vote-by-mail ballot in the drop-box, all blue, and am now just ignoring the circus. I have new pants to hem, cooking to do, and forging ahead with A Suitable Boy. Maybe I’ll start Death Cleaning for comic relief.
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alex said on October 15, 2024 at 5:59 pm
I watched the Chicago interview and what struck me — even more than his avoidance of answers and talking over the interviewer, his pathetic ignorance of economics, the race-baiting, the self-congratulations for utterly fabricated accomplishments, the too-numerous bald-faced lies, the whole freaking train wreck — were the peals of applause throughout and at the end. Does the Chicago Economics Club consist of morons?
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David C said on October 15, 2024 at 6:33 pm
They’re just rich assholes who want a tax cut. None of the US oligarchs who are sucking up to him have any awareness that he’ll make the same deal with them that Putin made with his oligarchs. They keep half and give half to him and he’ll leave them alone. Don’t give him half and fall out a window.
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Deborah said on October 15, 2024 at 7:10 pm
We took a lovely hike this morning in Acadia National Park. Exquisitely, magnificently beautiful tree gazing. Then we took the loop road around the park in our rental car, that made me super crabby. Nothing but creeping cars, lots and lots and lots of fellow tourists.
I must say if you ever come here stay on the west side of the Somes Sound, not the Bar Harbor side. We’re staying on the southwest side and we are so glad we are. The Bar Harbor (east) side is a tourist nightmare.
We came up with another big zero trying to find a fresh fish market here. We ended up buying frozen scallops at a place, they were local, but frozen. My husband made dinner with them and they were meh. We’re giving up.
Tomorrow we’re going to repeat our hike that we took this morning but branch out into other trails. Then we’ll go back out of the park instead of repeating the loop road.
Thursday we head back down to Portland where we’ll stay a couple of nights. Then we’ll drop off our car and take the train to Exeter, New Hampshire to see a building designed by the architect Louis Kahn, the Exeter Library at the prep school there https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phillips_Exeter_Academy_Library (because that’s what architects do, they look at buildings).
We spend the night in Exeter, then take the train back to Boston, spend one more night there, then back to Chicago.
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Sherri said on October 15, 2024 at 7:53 pm
They want the tax cuts, and believe against all evidence that the Trump tax policy, such as it is, won’t trash the economy. They hate taxes so much, they’re so convinced that they make the money themselves rather than thanks to a functioning economy, that they’ll take a bigger portion of a smaller pie.
They also think they’ll be able to control Trump, never mind that no one ever has. Musk is essentially funding the GOTV operation for Trump, such as it is, in the hope that he can be the shadow president if he gets elected, since Elon can’t run for president himself.
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Jim said on October 16, 2024 at 4:47 am
Orange Sludge #dancing# – cannot in his heels / too high .
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Mark P said on October 16, 2024 at 9:56 am
I can’t help thinking that somewhere, somewhen, in the real reality, not this nightmare branch in the timeline, the NYT is printing glowing articles about the accomplishments of Hillary Clinton, now ending her second term, Donald Trump is living in a mobile home park in north central Florida, and dog killers were eaten alive by a pack of rabid wolves.
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FDChief said on October 16, 2024 at 10:29 am
My kid sister came out to visit last week.
We did Portland then drove out to the coast, so we had a long car ride just to talk. During a conversation about politics sis mentioned unnamed “friends” who were Republicans but were “nice people”; not overtly racist, sexist, etc. She lives in a piece of rural New York state, so I find that entirely believable that she knows these kind of people.
“They’re Nazis.” I replied. “Nazis are never “nice people”; they’re Nazis. We fought a whole war and incinerated whole cities full of them.”
“But…these aren’t bad people.” she insisted.
“Yes. They are. Just like there were sweet old grannies and kind men and cute kiddies in Dresden, they’re Nazis. You can’t excuse them because they’re “nice”. They have to be fought, and, if need be, killed.”
She was silent. But couldn’t agree. Just didn’t want to face that.
And that’s why we’re here.
“And when their Orange Fuhrer wins, and he sends his soldiers out here to Portland, and they shoot me down in the street because I’ll fight rather than surrender to Nazis, your “nice” Republicans will be happy about that, now, won’t they?”
And she had nothing to say.
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Dexter Friend said on October 16, 2024 at 11:18 am
FDChief, Portland still gets bad press about the homeless population and their lifestyles, always focussing on drugs. Is it still that horrible?
My recovery program is having the International Convention in Vancouver, BC. I researched that place and wondered what the attraction is. The place has a terrible problem with homeless heroin junkies all over the city. Videos can be misleading, but a deeper dive into the situation has convinced me to stay the hell away from there. Anybody been there in the past few months?
I know it’s too far to drive, for sure. I don’t negotiate airports anymore without wheelchair service, which at times is spotty. I am retired with time, so a nice 5 day train ride…oh man…sounds awful!
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FDChief said on October 16, 2024 at 4:31 pm
As the revolting sanewashing of Tubby’s increasingly unhinged ranting demonstrates, it’s always important to look at “who benefits” from stuff like the Portland homeless-zombie-apocalypse “news” stories.
The people who own newspapers and television stations are the usual wealthy suspects who love their tax cuts. If the proles get the idea that there might be a way to deal with the reality that poor people can’t afford places to live, that mental health and other, physical, ailments are expensive and difficult to get treated, and that police and jail are expensive and worthless…by taxing rich people and requiring developers to build cheap housing, just think what those rabble might do to nice, clean-smelling rich people!
So, no. Portland isn’t a zombie homeless-infested hellhole. There’s problems, yes. Too many people on the street, too many of them with mental or emotional issues. But the notion that we’re being swarmed like World War Z? Nonsense.
It does benefit a certain fascist faction, tho. Wonder who that could be..?
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Julie Robinson said on October 16, 2024 at 5:09 pm
Dexter, I’ll admit it’s been maybe 12 years since I last visited Vancouver. Back then it was beautiful, with flowers everywhere. The temperate climate made it a green oasis, and I only remember it being peaceful and quiet.
So, I’m listening to Liz Cheney’s book about the 2020 election and 1/6/21, Oath and Honor. I didn’t want to, but am glad I am, I guess. She makes it clear how everything was planned in advance by large numbers of people, and how so many could have stopped it from happeneing. And of course, that Trump was the most important player in it all.
Liz earned my grudging admiration for the Congressional hearings on January 6, but I’ve just listened to her waxing on about Reagan, and I remembered we disagree on most issues.
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alex said on October 16, 2024 at 6:14 pm
The media have done a great job of creating false impressions of Chicago as well. People ask me how I managed to live there for 20 years without ever getting shot and they’re astounded when I tell them that I was never once a victim of any crime whatsoever. I should be equally astounded when people tell me they’re afraid to visit Chicago except that I’ve seen the same distorted reporting that they’re seeing, not to mention the outright lies being peddled by right-wing news outlets, so I understand their trepidation even though it’s groundless.
I hear it from people in Fort Wayne all the time and to give them some perspective, I tell them that proportionate to our size we have about the same number of shootings that Chicago does; in both cases it’s mostly gangbangers offing each other in parts of town you’d never visit anyway.
What I found strange after returning to Fort Wayne 20 years ago is that people have become distrustful of one another even in totally safe neighborhoods like mine and that seems to have only gotten worse since people started getting siloed into self-selected news and social media on their cell phones.
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Jakash said on October 16, 2024 at 6:39 pm
Here’s what I don’t get. (Well, one of many things that I don’t get.) Over 50 million Americans visited Chicago last year. Lots of them came from Indiana and Wisconsin and Iowa and Missouri. I’m assuming a substantial portion of them had a very good time and many might not even have gotten shot while they were here.
Why does that not seem to impact the narrative that Chicago and all big cities are hellholes, to be avoided at all cost? Don’t these folks talk to their red-state neighbors about their trips? Why do so many choose to vacation here when they could just stay home and attend a Ft. Wayne TinCaps game rather than risk traveling to Gomorrah to see the Cubs?
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Deborah said on October 16, 2024 at 8:06 pm
Ditto, on having people tell me they think all of Chicago is a hell hole and we must be so brave to live in the city. I honestly feel safer there than I do in Santa Fe. There are lotsa guns in New Mexico.
Our last night in Acadia, tomorrow we head to Portland, Maine that is, not Oregon. But you knew that.
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Sherri said on October 16, 2024 at 8:11 pm
The last time I visited Portland, I left early, but it wasn’t because of the homeless people or the drug addicts. I’ve been visiting Portland for over 30 years and it’s always had a substantial homeless population, like all the other West Coast cities.
What made me cut my visit short was the Proud Boys planning a march downtown. Since I always stay downtown when I visit, and since I didn’t trust the Portland cops to actually police the Proud Boys, I left.
Portland, Seattle, San Francisco, LA – I’ve walked alone in all of those supposed hellholes with large homeless populations, even at night, and never felt unsafe.
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Jeff Gill said on October 17, 2024 at 6:09 am
Got some nice comet photos last night, with my iPhone 13, nothing special. It took me a while to figure out where it was (the key was looking to one side of where it might have been, not trying to use the center of your focus) then getting some pictures into the area. Like the northern lights recently, you could see better in the phone for its light gathering capacity. Best about an hour to an hour and a half after your local sunset (7:45 to 8:15 here) — but I have a Cub pack meeting tonight, so over to y’all! It might be visible a few more nights, rising but fading as Comet A3 races away from the sun.
Next visit about 80,000 years from now…
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Jeff Gill said on October 17, 2024 at 6:44 am
Also:
“Joe Kennedy III, a former congressman and one of Ethel’s grandsons, recounted some of her life’s lessons: “Triscuits should be fried. Bacon goes with everything. If you want to get to 96, you should eat deviled eggs, fried chicken and clam chowder for lunch every day.”
He recalled that his grandmother ordered those at her table to keep their elbows off of it — “always” — but paid no mind to the three dogs beneath it.
Rory Kennedy, Ethel’s daughter who was born after Robert Kennedy’s death, spoke of the time she told her mother that she wanted to get arrested protesting apartheid as a teenager.
“Great,” her mother responded. “I’ll drive.””
[Gift link] https://wapo.st/3YronLs
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Little Bird said on October 17, 2024 at 10:36 am
Jackash at 13, I think most big cities are blue, even if their state isn’t. That probably explains why they’re dubbed hellholes.
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