Maybe it was checking in and out of Jimmy Carter’s funeral Thursday, all that talk about decency and putting aside differences for the good of the country, the stuff that makes us proud to be Americans (if any of us still are), all washing like a tide over the head of the incoming president, and knowing all he’s thinking about is who he might want to fuck or fuck over next, or how much money he can shake out of X or Y, or some other shall we say less noble topic.
But once again I found myself thinking I can’t believe we’re going to do this again. I mean: Can’t. Believe.
Here’s a story from the New York Post this week:
Former and future first lady Melania Trump has inked an eye-popping $40 million deal with Amazon to license a documentary on her life — with cameos from her husband, Donald, and son, Barron.
The documentary, directed by “Rush Hour” auteur Brett Ratner, is set to be released later this year — with one source close to the agreement suggesting it could spawn multiple projects.
The hefty price tag was first reported by Puck News and covers the rights to projects involving Mrs. Trump over the next four years.
Page Six has learned that Disney was also in the running and bid $14 million, only to be swamped by the internet giant.
Forty million dollars. For a documentary about a vacant plastic-surgery addict, with “cameos” from her weird son and felon president. I wonder if she has to kick upstairs to the boss.
The next-closest bid was $14 million. That tells you something right there.
I was discussing this in a group text the other day, and someone said, “Remember when you could get put away for abusing a franking privilege?” Yes, I do. I bet all those guys bounced from office, or cut from the field, or publicly disgraced for things like throwing your Christmas cards into the outgoing mail, or saying yee-haw with a little too much enthusiasm, or otherwise stepping off the straight and narrow? Those guys are cursing that they weren’t born into this era of naked greed not only being OK, but celebrated. Go Melania! Not bad for a retired sex worker!
Today the editorial-page editor of The Detroit News, a conservative but generally one with enough sense to be a never-Trumper in 2016 and a despairing left-behind Republican ever since, wrote a column with this lead:
Time to focus, Mr. President-elect.
The stream-of-consciousness flow of ideas and promises that marked Donald Trump’s presidential campaign must now give way to deliberate, well-thought-out policymaking.
But Trump’s press conference Tuesday, his second since the election, suggests he hasn’t made the pivot from candidate to chief executive.
To quote Miranda Priestly: Did you fall down and hit your little head? Have you been asleep for eight years? Did you miss Infrastructure Week? “Deliberate, well-thought-out policymaking?” Making “the pivot from candidate to chief executive?” Are you insane? There’ll be none of the former and the latter will never happen. We’ve all seen this movie before. And now we’re going to see it again.
2024 was the last good year. And this is the first bad year.
Even the way apparently sane people discuss this stuff is crazy, all this talk of “annexing” Canada as the 51st state. Annex? Are you insane? “Buying” Greenland? I feel like I’m living in some weird alternate reality.
And California continues to burn.
OK, let’s enjoy the weekend and prepare for the rest of the first bad year.
basset said on January 10, 2025 at 7:53 am
Continuing the mention of Anita Bryant’s passing yesterday… she went to the same high school in Tulsa as Leon Russell and David Gates, all within a year of each other: https://www.ebay.com/itm/286218300673
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Jeff Gill said on January 10, 2025 at 8:55 am
Many thanks to the kind words from y’all, including those who have much heavier loads to carry uphill: we moved my mother into memory care on Tuesday, having pushed it back yet again due to last Monday’s ten inches of snow & ice. My sister & I have basically dumped $10,000 we got $180 back on for nailing down a room in a facility close to where Mom had been at my sister’s the last four and a half years, then of course five residents died over the intervening period after they’d gone four months with no “openings.” But it got done . . . and she was just cognizant enough to be pretty angry that night after the shenanigans we went through to take her out and around to move most of her room into the new location, and then arrive there after supper out.
The next day? She just kept asking if her car had been towed (she hasn’t driven since 2018, no vehicle since 2020), and referred to me as her cousin to a staffer. So she’s settling in, after a fashion. Lots of learnings, many of them horrible.
Oh, and this will work until Hallowe’en; staff hinted they could keep her once her assets are “spent down” on Medicaid, but I warned my sister back in late November “they’ll stop saying that once we have her moved in” and sure enough, that’s not likely to happen, but we have nine months with a 90 year old with rapidly developing dementia to see what happens. If we move her to a Medicaid only facility then, it’s likely to be 30-40 minutes away, and . . . well, you know.
So yeah, not looking forward to 2025 much. But our warming center got fully staffed by volunteers in my absence, we’re open last two nights and tonight, probably activating again next week for three nights (10 degrees or lower temps are our threshold); the MAGA folk want to shut us down, but I hear indirectly they’re fearful of owning the results of what will likely happen if they do, which is conscience of the most rudimentary sort.
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Deborah said on January 10, 2025 at 8:56 am
The stuff that comes out of Trump’s mouth is mind boggling. The stuff he “tweets” is even worse. All you can do is shake your head, unfortunately. The fact that the entire Republican Congress supports it is the most troubling. LA burns while they fiddle.
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Bob (not Greene) said on January 10, 2025 at 10:07 am
Jeff, who are these people who want to shut down a *warming center* of all things. I hope their furnaces all go out in the middle of a polar vortex and they die. Fuck this miserable country. Populated by absolute assholes and dipshits.
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Jeff Borden said on January 10, 2025 at 10:25 am
Bob NG,
A friend of mine who was a fellow TV critic at the Austin newspaper has used her considerable energy on retirement to work for an organization called Sunrise,which works to help the homeless. Ken Paxton, the loathsome attorney general in Texass, is working to close it down, apparently because neighbors in the area are complaining about the clientele, which admittedly includes many drug addicts, alcoholics and mentally ill. There are far too many cruel, mean-spirited people like Paxton, using their power not to help but to hurt. And no wonder. Look at the hateful sociopath we just elected preznit?
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Mark P said on January 10, 2025 at 11:01 am
Alternate reality? I have been thinking that for a long time. I have not been too upset about all of this because deep down I simply do not believe it’s happening. But, as I have said before, I do think we are in the midst of a radical long-term social change, like when the Nazis took control in Germany. Very much like it. I think the only way we get out of this mess is if Trump pushes it so far that we have a military coup. And then what do we have?
Bananas! Bananas! Get your bananas right here! Fresh from Latin America!
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Julie Robinson said on January 10, 2025 at 11:57 am
JeffG, I’m so sorry. We have some of those issues here too and Lord knows about the future. It wears you out.
Coming here from the last post, everyone please go back and read the Anita Bryant obit Alex posted, and click on the Carol Burnett link. I’ve seen so much of her work, but her epic takedown of Anita is for the ages.
Congratulations to Mark Zuckerberg on his successful rat p*nis transplant. Since there’s no fact checking, it must be true, right?
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alex said on January 10, 2025 at 12:25 pm
Talking Points Memo has been trying to elucidate about Greenland, and the gist is that the tech bros want to leave Silicon Valley and live on Mars, but since that’s not likely to happen any time soon they’ve had their eye on Greenland instead and they also have Trump’s ear. Bonkers, I know.
I didn’t view the Carol Burnett sendup on my first reading of the Bryant obit, but I did just now and wow. Here’s a link to it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Js-yJ48C6Po
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David C said on January 10, 2025 at 3:21 pm
We moved our mom to memory care about a year ago. As those places go, it’s nice. She’s gained about 40 lbs though. That’s quite a bit for a five footer. She always ate carbs sparingly. The food there is quite carb heavy and she eats everything she’s given. She also acts as if dad is still alive. We let it pass as long as she thinks he’s out talking to the boys. When she gets agitated wondering where he is we have to tell her he’s passed. He reaction is always “Oh, that’s right”. So much better than if she started mourning all over. My sister tells her he’s gone to heaven and that seems to go down even better. She seems to remember who I am better than she does my brother and sister. I don’t know why. I’ve only been back home twice since we put her there. That’s one of the reasons we’re moving back to Michigan. I want so see her more while she still remembers who I am.
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tajalli said on January 10, 2025 at 5:03 pm
Can not even look much less listen to that guy – the cognitive dissonance is too thundering loud.
But, what a great way to launder $40B or create an independent nest egg.
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Deborah said on January 10, 2025 at 5:22 pm
That send up of Anita Bryant was hilarious.
Anita Bryant spoke from time to time at a Baptist church near where I lived in Miami, it made the news and I remember it being controversial. I think there were protests around the church but can’t remember exactly. I was in college then so wasn’t there except holidays and summers.
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Dave said on January 10, 2025 at 6:50 pm
My mother was in a memory care facility for just over four years, from a little over a month after my father passed away until her own passing. The day we moved her out of the home that she’d lived in for roughly 57 1/2 years was a terrible day. She fought us and we finally half-carried her out of the house. She didn’t know us, often thought she was a teenager living with her parents, thought my youngest sister was her good high school friend, thought I was her younger brother, didn’t really know how many children she had, would ask us questions about her childhood that were obscure to us and we had no idea what the answer might be. We learned quickly not to contradict her, it only made it worse, we almost always went along with whatever world she was living in.
David C., you say your mother knows you, that is good, our mother mostly knew my brother-in-law and none of her own five children. She also knew my father’s younger brother. It was a difficult four years but there were times we also found humor in it such as one afternoon when she suddenly realized who my sister was and said to her, “My, you’re looking old”. Oh, we laughed. What else could we do?
My sympathies for everyone who has to watch their parent or significant other go this route.
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Julie Robinson said on January 10, 2025 at 9:50 pm
D says the worst day of his life was the day his mom didn’t know who he was.
Another gem in the Anita Bryant obit was how she tried to rebuild her career by performing in the recreation rooms of Florida trailer parks. Oh the irony.
Reading about all the lost and injured animals in LA broke my heart all over again, and all I can do is make a donation. I chose the Pasadena Humane Shelter, since that’s where our family lives. They’ve taken in 400 animals and have organized pet food drives to help out with families who are out of their homes and probably hurting for cash to feed them. One small light shining in the murk of the fire.
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Deborah said on January 10, 2025 at 10:09 pm
Because uncle J was wealthy we could keep him in his own home with a group of 8 or so caregivers that were scheduled around the clock to be there for him, each with an 8 hour shift through the weeks, there was usually one or two people with him all of the time. His overall health except for the dementia was pretty good until the last couple of weeks, after he had broken his hip when he couldn’t walk anymore he gave up his will to live. It’s sad though to think that one person was able to live the way he did because he had the funds, in most senior homes 8 people care for way more than one person. My husband was chosen by uncle J to be his power of attorney so he became responsible for his uncle’s health care and manage his financial concerns. It was a huge responsibility. Uncle J, did not want to end up in a home and he had the resources to make that happen. That’s a big difference than what it is like for the rest of us.
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Jeff Gill said on January 11, 2025 at 10:45 am
Cognitive decline is so variable, so complicated. Dementia is . . . fascinating, and of course terrifying. My mother doesn’t mention Dad at all, but is often talking about her father (who died in 1970) as alive, and needing her to come teach for him (he was a principal and superintendent); she tells the staff at the hair salon she’s still teaching which always gets us a startled look from the new hires. Sis or I just smile sadly and shake our heads, and they figure it out pretty quickly.
When she started riffing on how her dad was coming and we needed to make up a room for him, sis could say “Mom, he’s been gone over fifty years” and she’d say “oh right . . .” but that stopped six or eight months ago, and she would wave off anyone saying he wasn’t alive or on his way and continue about how he needed her to help cover classes for him. I became a cousin and she kept (keeps) asking me about my baby, and how the baby is doing. At first she’d accept someone saying “Jeff is 63, his wife 65, and there ain’t no baby!” but that stopped and she would smile sardonically and say something like “you’re a kidder” and continue asking where the baby is or when I’m bringing it.
We’ve come to the provisional conclusion it’s Dr. Pol’s son Charles having a baby he carries around on a number of episodes of that reality show, one she’s become amazingly & entirely obsessed with, and I’m Charles-ified (no resemblance physically, but hey, what are the rules here?). There are some other Dr. Pol related translations into her life which are too weird to get into here, but it supports the idea that the baby came from that show.
However, lately, she gets testy and tells me to go get the baby and expects me to leave the room . . . which I do before she gets too agitated, then wait long enough to come back and see if we can keep her off the subject, at least for a while.
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Dexter Friend said on January 11, 2025 at 12:14 pm
Jeff, Godspeed in your journey. My family was shaken 10 years ago when my brother, then age 66, crossed over into the horrors of Wernicke-Korsakoff disease, as years earlier he declared himself “too smart” to accept the programs of alcoholism recovery. He pushed it to the limit, then into the abyss. His wife is a retired nurse,and takes care of him. This disease is called “wet brain syndrome” in simple vernacular of the day.
The only thing that is slightly good is that it shows me what will happen if I decide to take a little sip of booze.
Trump and his henchmen are poised to begin raiding homes of brown skin folks to begin the mass deportation. Again, family separation is a big topic, and heartless Homan is going to implement it. For some families and all in the USA who merit looks from ICE, those people are already living under what I call “light terrorism”. Imagine having this threat hanging over your head.
I thought the Palisades fire was contained, but today it exploded again, 10% containment only. I have been watching this disaster for days and it gets worse.
California Dreamin’
On such a winter’s day…
Damn…what a shame .
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Julie Robinson said on January 11, 2025 at 12:24 pm
Jeff, maybe she’d enjoy a baby doll. My SIL carried hers constantly at the end, and agitation could be calmed by asking her to help the baby. Who knows–as you say, no case presents the same.
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Mark P said on January 11, 2025 at 2:21 pm
My father-in-law died from Lewy Body dementia. That was my diagnosis, because he had Parkinson’s-like symptoms. His decline was not as terrible as some. We were lucky to find someone who could move in and take care of him full-time for a reasonable amount. He got some financial assistance from the VA, and that along with his Social Security paid for everything. It would not have paid for a memory care facility, so his house would have had to be sold. That would have been a problem because it was not worth much. Now my wife is showing some signs of decline, sometimes thinking there are other people in the house, sometimes not quite recognizing me for a few minutes, and “remembering” things that didn’t happen. I don’t know what I’ll do if and when it gets really bad.
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Jakash said on January 11, 2025 at 3:20 pm
I don’t know what I expected, but I’m rather perturbed that the felon who precludes the need for an orange jumpsuit by coloring himself orange has received no sentence at all for having committed 34 felonies. I just refuse to believe that the “original intent” of the vaunted Founding Fathers was that the president should be above the law. Though if there’s a phrase that seems to fit in well with the overall nature of his life, “an unconditional discharge” does work.
That guy lies all the time, needless to say, but one of the few things he says that’s actually true is that the justice system is rigged. The truly sad part for the nation is that it’s rigged for all rich white guys like him, not just (shudder) incoming “presidents.”
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Dexter Friend said on January 11, 2025 at 4:41 pm
Mark P. : My brother exhibited similar behavior, thinking he was in our long-gone aunt’s house 200 miles away, talking about a shaggy dog he was going to get in Texas, not recognizing my voice or my identity on the phone 11 years ago, the last time he would speak to me. Best wishes.
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Suzanne said on January 11, 2025 at 4:57 pm
My in-laws are both gone as is my father, all within the past 5 years. Father-in-law had Parkinson’s and my dad lost his short term memory to a stroke, My mother is still with us but we have had to move her to an assisted living facility. Now, my brother and I are cleaning out her house in anticipation of selling it and I am trying to tamp down the anger because it is so full of stuff that could have been gotten rid of years ago but wasn’t. Things like old feather pillows that likely haven’t been used in 40 years or long outdated AAA travel books & phone books. My in-law’s house was just as bad. It took my husband and his siblings several years to sort through everything and dispose of it.
It’s turning me into a minimalist. As you all know, I faced an aggressive cancer several years ago that could easily have taken me out & a relapse probably will, so my perspective is that I don’t want to spend the precious years I have left sorting through closets & cupboards that could have been cleaned out years ago by the owners who simply couldn’t be bothered to do so themselves when they were healthy. I do not want my kids to have to go through this.
Sorry for the rant…
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Julie Robinson said on January 11, 2025 at 5:49 pm
Suzanne, my mom has a similar worthless collection, but she has hauled it from home to home to storage unit to storage unit. She’s currently paying over $500/month, and while it’s her money to spend, I think of all the better ways it could be used. What a sickness. I’m just working on our crap now because there’s no way we can get movement from her. The whole family either has dementia or ADHD, or both, and it’s a constant battle to keep the house from becoming overrun. It’s all I’ve done the last two days, so I feeeeel your pain.
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Deborah said on January 11, 2025 at 5:51 pm
I am definitely a minimalist and my husband is even more than me. Our place in Chicago won’t be hard at all to clear out. It’s so small, you just can’t keep much. We do have some art and furniture there that will be very sellable. In Santa Fe it’s a different story because LB is not a minimalist but she’s also not as old as we are, so she has more time to pare it down, hopefully. It’s only two bedrooms with normal sized closets and a small garage. The garage has way more stuff in it than I’m comfortable with and we do clean it out every summer. I have a rule in Santa Fe that if you get something new, you have to get rid of something old, it’s hard to keep track of though, I must say. Also our cabin is tiny, so not much there either. When I get even older I’m going to start getting more strict about the new/old rule in Santa Fe.
I’ve never had to clean out anyone’s place after they’ve died as I’ve lived quite far from relatives and others live close by so it usually falls to them. We did help with Uncle Js a bit but he had grandchildren who lived in the same neighborhood. We were two hours away, comparatively.
Speaking of people who’ve passed away, LB mentioned this briefly in an earlier comment, a friend of hers died of sudden natural causes and nobody knew for about 3 weeks and she had 6 cats. She was 51, but in poor health and everyone she was friends with were busy with the holidays etc so they hadn’t realized that they hadn’t heard from her. That is so sad, that no one would know about your death for possibly 3 weeks. LB was instrumental in contacting her other friends and getting some action to find out what was going on. This was a friend that LB met initially on Facebook but they had since met in person many times through the years. This poor woman was estranged from a lot of her family so those people were used to not hearing from her often. So sad.
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Suzanne said on January 11, 2025 at 7:45 pm
I also found a half used bottle of Mecurochrome at my mom’s house. If you are old enough, you remember getting that slathered on cuts and scrapes. It hasn’t been made for almost 30 years and the bottle looks even older. Why? Why oh why??
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Deborah said on January 11, 2025 at 10:18 pm
Do I ever remember mecurochrome, when I was a kid in Miami we had a mango tree in our backyard that we used to play under all the time, it turned out I was very allergic and always broke out in a horrible rash. My mother used mecurochrome on it which made absolutely no difference but I was covered in embarrassing orange blotches. And that’s not the worst of it she also gave me enemas to get rid of it. Hard to believe isn’t it? Plus I have to say I have some lasting trauma as a result of that ignorance.
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basset said on January 11, 2025 at 11:20 pm
Mercurochrome on scuffs and scrapes, Vicks Vapo Rub on everything else… guess I’m just old, didn’t know mercurochrome hadn’t been made in so long.
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David C said on January 12, 2025 at 5:48 am
When we cleaned out my grandparent’s farm we found dozens of bags of DDT dust. This would have been in the mid 80s. It was banned in 1972 and he hadn’t farmed since the mid 60s. My grandfather must have believed in buying in bulk. My uncle remembers having a little pump that he used to dust the chickens and everything else in the chicken coop including himself.
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Deborah said on January 12, 2025 at 7:08 am
Another thing we did as kids, when the trucks went slowly down are street spraying for mosquitoes we used to run after them letting the fog wash over us. I think it was DDT. I’m surprised we’re still alive.
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Dorothy Michalski said on January 12, 2025 at 7:21 am
Our street in this new subdivision is mostly older people. I met a guy walking his two dogs about ten days ago. Roger – he talks my ear off but he’s not bad to talk to at all. I’m chatty too! But he shared almost immediately that his wife is in the early stages of Alzheimer’s. They moved here from Florida on December 10. Their son is an attorney at Ohio State and works/knows dozens of doctors so Roger decided to move here so his son could help with his wife’s care. I feel sorry for him. He’s talked to my husband, too, and you can tell he’s starved for conversation. Their house in Bradenton was supposed to close on three different dates in December but something keeps going wrong at the time of the closing. Now it’s finally not going to happen at all. He’s worried about that house selling; two more houses on their block went up for sale recently and he thinks they’ll have to drop their price. That is a lot on your plate to deal with. They have two daughters, too, who live in Virginia. You can tell he’s told me a lot of information! I do not have any personal experience with anyone having a loved one with dementia but that probably won’t be a fact for long.
In the meantime, Nestle has made friends with Roger’s dogs, Tessa who is a wavy haired Irish setter and Zoe who is an Airedale. Tessa is skittish and a couple days ago she gave me her paw after I petted the top of her head a bit. Roger said “Ohhh you’re in NOW! That’s a good sign that she likes you!”
Mercurochrome and Merthiolate – my dad had both in the medicine cabinet. He had been a medic in WWII so he knew his way around first aid. He would put some of one of those things into a sprayer and spray the back of our throats if we had a bad sore throat. I gag now just thinking of that!!! Did anyone else ever get that treatment? Another medicine he had that stunk to high heaven was Resinol. GOD did we hate that stuff. We’d do anything to avoid it. I guess maybe it was a precursor to over the counter antibiotic ointment? I’m just glad I don’t have to smell it anymore. Do they still make it?
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