Well, one advantage of being snowed in is that we have a perfect excuse to drink. And two large bottles of my all-time favorite beer, courtesy of Spud. And a pile of fun movies, courtesy of Deadhead and SugarFree. I can deal with this.
And speaking of deals, birthdays today include the most memorable of all US presidents; arguably the greatest black female writer in America (and a deep thinker); the exception to the “Christ, what an asshole!” rule; a guy who foisted on us both a remarkably shitty novel and a remarkably shitty movie; a guy who rivaled Yoko Ono for ruining the most music; a guy whose presence in a movie means it will be wonderful or horrible, never anything in between; and a guy who’s spending today sitting it out.
News up.
I remain highly uncomfortable with Congress getting involved with the operations of private institutions. Maybe go after public ones instead? If any of this starts us toward ending taxpayer-funded grants, that would be an excellent fallout. Not likely, but a boy can dream.
Oh, honey, we’ve all seen the nude photos.
The only thing interesting about women’s basketball.
I remember when all this happened on Y2K night.
IOW, exactly like every other non-government workplace, but with an extra comma in the salaries.
“…and shoot Reagan, that’s something chicks find impressive.”
Yeah, this is a Mingus Morning chez Old Man.
My two reactions to that “article” — 1) Who cares? and 2) Even if she is — she’s never going to date you, article writer. Because that’s pretty obviously what she so, so dreams of.
Morning, all.
Cool link.
Might have been believable if they’d done an EMP instead of some stupid “once hack kills all computers” crap. Enough cars from the pre-connected days still to manage somewhat, and enough people with the knowhow to work around things who haven’t died off yet.
A full EMP strike on the other hand would be an actual disaster, most likely. Kind of like my first comment.. what the hell did I do there, anyway? Sigh.
It’s predictive programming and the only fix to thwart those dasterdly Chinese/Russians/Hate Target of the Day will most assuredely be much more onerous government oversight of the internet and of our ability to interface with it.
I watched it and at the end thought “that was dumb, unbelievable, and a waste of time.”
NewWife has Costello tickets in BNA late this month. It’s a quick up and back that won’t leave time for anything, but I hope to stand the local Glibs pints some day.
Ever run into Plisade or Contrarian P ?
Where’s BNA? Not everyone knows your airport code shtick.
McG lives around Nashville
you’re upstate? I never figured you for LGA or JFK
“Catskills”
I guess we’re driving
Unless you’ve come to the ER drunk on a Saturday night you’ve probably not seen me. I keep a pretty low profile. Went downtown a grand total of once last year even though I only live a couple of miles away. Just find that these days I’m more comfortable on my couch at home or having a quiet drink with friends than going out
See email address below CP if you ever want to meet up with Plisade and I.
Hey Don! Plisade and I have met up a couple of times but haven’t met Contrarian P. If you end up having time holler – nashvilleglibs at the gmail dot com.
We used to navigate with paper maps and landmarks. But with his car’s satnav out of action, Ethan Hawke’s character Clay Sandford is unable even to find his way to the nearby town.
He’s the stupid type that drives into a ditch because his navigation system told him to.
I heard about the evil white Teslas scene and said, “Nope.”
This stupidity seals the deal.
Once again, you have disappointed Obama.
And I’m….. fine with that.
Planes falling out of the sky. Ships beaching. It’s like the writers don’t understand how things work.
I went on a road trip a few years ago and tried to get a state/region map at gas station. They no longer carry maps. No road atlas either.
I guess you have to buy a road atlas online and then keep it handy in the car just in case.
the exception to the “Christ, what an asshole!” rule;
Happy birthday Aidan Maese-Czeropski!
Well, one advantage of being snowed in is that we have a perfect excuse to drink.
I didn’t think you needed an excuse.
As a GenX’er — I’m still of the conviction that it will have collapsed / will be gone by the time I get there… even as the “time I get there” starts looming closer on the horizon. Or I’ll likely just have to keep working until I keel over if I can (the agism latent in the tech industry means you never know…) Yay!
I keep waiting, like watching the juggler with the plates in the air. We know, if he keeps adding plates, at some point all will collapse. We just know which is the plate is the problem.
-just don’t know-
In my 30s and 40s that was my expectation too – probably even into early 50s. As I hit 60 I even toyed with taking it early, just to be sure. I still did start pre full retirement age with a modest penalty.
It’s a political reality that transcends the fiscal/demographic realities. There will be another tweak to full retirement age, and a rate hike, and maybe, just maybe some means testing on benefits – but that’s it.
I’ve been playing with a spreadsheet running the cumulative total SS benefits month by month if I start at 65, when I’d qualify for Medicare, compared to waiting until my “full retirement age” per SS. It would take a long time for the cumulative total of the latter to catch up to the “lower monthly but started sooner” amount. Granted, I’m not accounting for the deduction of Medicare premiums, but your handy-dandy online SS statement doesn’t tell you what those would be, as far as I can tell.
I just got an update, I think Medicare is $174 now.
The wife did collect starting at 62, since her individual benefit was going to get washed out by her spousal benefit (50% of mine). So we did figure out that that was going to be money left on the table. It can be pretty complicated figuring out all of the implications.
spreadsheet
I do a lot of this kind of thing,
but this one is really hard because they can (will?) change the rules.
I think about someone figuring the NPV of some tooling in 1993 and fully justifying some huge investment just to mothball it before it was depreciated because NAFTA: the main thing never made it into the calculation….there wasn’t even some risk premium figured for some unk unk.
The Missus and I got in at 62, glad we did. My son will be 62 in a few months, I don’t know what his plan is but I’m not going to give him any advice. What do I know?
We end up paying some tax on the SS but no surprises there.
We will take the early hits, as we just don’t want to keep working and have enough investments to make it happen. Now, the kicker is the wife will have to work until 65 for the med insurance, but even that could change if I can talk her into moving to a low cost area, like Pittsburg suburbs or someplace like Fort Leavenworth Kansas. Nice houses for sub 100K, and we can sell some property to fund her HC. It all depends on when I can transition my short circuiting body to disability.
Thank god I didn’t wait to have kids until I was in my 30’s or 40’s. Like my best friend.
The last estimate I saw was 2.1 workers per recipient in 2030. The Ponzi scheme is running out of suckers.
a guy who foisted on us both a remarkably shitty novel and a remarkably shitty movie;
Tolkein, or Frank Herbert?
There’s another Dune hater here? Well thank God.
Me three. What a crap book. I couldn’t bring myself to read any of the sequels.
I dunno about crap, but it wasn’t the magnum opus that I expected given the hype. I’d rate it “above average” to “good”.
It’s like I don’t even know you people.
You didn’t get that the Fremen were the Jews of the story?
The National Lampoon version, “Doon“, was a much better read.
Most of these people write more than one book….although they rarely make movies from the really good ones.
Embrace the power of ‘and’. Both good settings, both writers I couldn’t stand to read.
Government and “non-profit” drones — “What? Organizations don’t just keep around people bringing in no value? INCONCEIVABLE!”
Of course, HR and DEI put the lie to that….
Taylor Swift nudes: I don’t believe you. Do you have a link so that I may confirm the veracity or lack thereof of your assertation?
Warty is the master of Celebrity Nudes. I’m a bit paranoid about sites like Fappening.
For research purposes only.
Wasn’t that Pete Townshend’s excuse ?
Yes. And it worked!
I love how “gay” has completely disappeared from the left’s lexicon now.
Gay white man – you’re part of the oppressor class now bubba.
Can we use it to describe happiness again then? I’ve been snickering at The Flintstones theme since the 1970s and that needs to stop.
Well, a certain Harvard President has made it refer to lame again.
Sorry rhy, you are just another person she fucked over.
a guy who rivaled Yoko Ono for ruining the most music;
Happy birthday Marty Haugen!
Yoko Ono was the best Beatle.
/puts up fists, prepares to FIGHT!
George Martin was the best Beatle.
Honorable Mention to Billy Preston (who also did a nice cover of “My Sweet Lord” at the Concert for George. The other George, that is.)
arguably the greatest black female writer in America
Happy birthday Claudine Gay?
Well, CG is a copy writer, she’ll be remembered, temporarily, but soon to be forgotten, destined to live out her life with her cats.
Speaking of Ms. Gay, and her academic colleagues.
Obvious reason not mentioned – they don’t want their own publications scrutinized too closely.
Less than two years after kinging Wilson as their franchise quarterback and offering him a five-year, $245 million contract extension, the Broncos clearly have experienced buyer’s remorse. But rather than just releasing Wilson and eating the cost if he got injured (a Wal-Mart heir owns the Broncos; they can afford it), the team resorted to dirty tricks to try to protect its books.
How dare an NFL team try to salvage as much value out of a trade that turned out to be an albatross? They should just cut Wilson and pay him and extra hundred mil just to be nice.
https://www.denverpost.com/2023/04/28/russell-wilson-trade-broncos-seahawks-final-tally/
The Broncos only gave up three players and five draft picks for him, so just letting a couple hundred mil go as well should be no biggie.
sin,
morons.
Eat a quarter of a billion dollars? That’s what passes for sports inner workings analysis nowadays?
Unlike other sports, NFL contracts are not guaranteed, so there is no threat (or even likelihood) on paying all of that out. Even taking the salary cap hit is some fraction of that (over several years).
Better purveyor of creepy but fun drawings: Charles Addams or Edward Gorey? Discuss (SLD: voluntarily, of course.)
Also, is that some rule regarding cartoonists of which I’m not familiar?
Addams for sure. His drawings and ideas were incomparably brilliant.
“Every cartoon in ‘The New Yorker’ can be improved by changing the caption to “Christ, what an asshole”
Especially the ones about gay sex?
Cartoons are the only amusing thing about that rag anymore.
Gorey! O, the Tinies.
I’ll take Gorey. There was a subtle humor in them that Adams didn’t quite have, he tended to be over the top with it, and it adds to the creepiness in my eyes.
Snow has begun again. I did not remove it during the interval, so I guess I know what I’ll be doing at 11:30.
Snow
Snow
First significant snow of the winter, about 3-4 inches. I’ll shovel off the steps but not enough in the driveway to worry about. Snow plow came by about 4 PM yesterday, get that overtime in.
*crawls out of bed*
Dang, it’s really coming down here. Heavier than yesterday.
You people are terrible with your taunting.
It looks like we’re not even going to get much rain this winter – and the overnight temps have only dipped to upper 30s, not the 20s I hope for (kills more bugs). I hate this stupid state.
God, we are getting dumped on for water. You guys got that massive snow pack last year, to bad you haven’t built any new dams lately.
Yeah. Too bad we didn’t have various bond measures and laws over the last 30 years passed mandating increased water storage or anything. (Sigh)
Are there, uhm, lines of it?
This mountain is PURE SNOW!
Technically, didn’t Lamar Jackson spend yesterday sitting it out?
‘“Rights are being stripped from basically everyone who isn’t a straight white cisgender male,” Swift told the magazine. “I didn’t realize until recently that I could advocate for a community that I’m not a part of.”’
*tilts head to side like a confused puppy*
Do what, now?
“I’m an idiot.”
-Taylor Swift
A rich idiot.
Very, very good within her skill set.
Appears to have the relationship skills of a dodo, and the political skills to match.
Perhaps she’ll serve as a warning to the younger generations that entertainment idols don’t have deeper thoughts or valuable messages on how to live your life, but given human history — I doubt it.
Meh, expressing the same blatant propaganda that her fanbase is being subjected to is politically sound.
And that she voluntarily marinates in.
She should stick to penning lyrics about the breakup with her most recent fuckbuddies, that’s what puts the food on her table.
The events described in that article are *exactly* the desired result from certain quarters – those that run public school education, among other things.
Great music this morning, I usually wait ’til Miles, Monk, and Mingus Mondays© to get my jazz fill, I may jump in early this week.
Right now, Tomb Raider and I are listening to Johnny Hodges and Oliver Nelson with out morning caffeine. You’d enjoy it.
“I remain highly uncomfortable with Congress getting involved with the operations of private institutions. “
They are already involved. They are funding the leftist garbage now. Cutting the ways they do so would be great, but if we wait for that, we’ll have many more years of government-funded leftist garbage. With no good options on offer, I think attaching conditions to that funding is the least bad. That’s not all Congress is talking about, but it’s on the list, at last.
And let’s not forget that DEI programs and bureaucracies were turbocharged by the infamous “Dear Colleague” letters during Obama. The government has been directing university operations for quite some time now, even at nominally private schools. It’s not (yet) a question of whether, it’s a question of how, government will meddle.
This is exactly on point. The Ivies, all of which take FED money while having zero need for it, need to have a pull on the chain. They are the most visible, and, in Gay’s case, are the biggest house of cards. Alsotoo, most universities are state based, and this keeps them out of that morass. It does signal that if the R’s take back control, which is only a matter of time, that they too can play stupid human tricks with funding. You want that Ed. grant? Chop DEI funding, And so on.
The ivies took the political cookie, and now there is another master, they get to eat some other dogs vomit.
“MSNBC Anchor Chokes Up With Jan. 6 Officer”
https://youtu.be/4E0UXQT5fDA?si=zUVQQ3fGlKrSo7_D
Heh…this would be better than porn if there weren’t millions actually buying into it (or are they really buying into it? seems very performative IMHO).
Pretty sure most MSDNC viewers would rate Jan 6 a bigger tragedy than 9/11 or Pearl Harbor.
Yeah, those two just attacked America. 1/6 attacked DEMocracy!
There’s a lull in the snow here in southern NH. It’s supposed to pick up again soon and go into the evening. The predicted total is 10″-15″. I looked outside. I doubt we’ll get that much.
RE: Social Security: Burn it to the ground and stop stealing others’ money. The article is behind a paywall so I didn’t bother reading it, but my opinion of Social Security is the same.
RE: private universities and government interference: I want the government involved but on the other hand, those schools involved can cry me a river. They’ve taken huge amounts of government grants. They’ve produced endless streams of Marxists and other busybodies who are more than happy to use the government to further their ends.
I guess I should wait to post until after breakfast.
I don’t want the government involved.
They’ve taken huge amounts
Of course you’re right about the facts on the ground. My preference is to ignore the practical details because they just make enemies without improving anyone’s understanding.
Take FIRE: I don’t think I’ve ever disagreed with them. But I don’t believe in government schools, so what is the real point of fighting every pointy-headed fuckwad chancellor? We’re not going to fix 200 universities one lawsuit at a time because freedom is NOT the national preference or agenda. And we’re not going to privatize those institutions, so we’re stuck with the inertia and its undying residues.
Bleah.
I played https://squaredle.com/xp 01/07:
*23/23 words
🎯 Perfect accuracy
I played https://squaredle.com 01/07:
79/79 words (+3 bonus words)
🎯 In the top 7% by accuracy
🔥 Solve streak: 24
I played https://squaredle.com/xp 01/07:
23/23 words (+6 bonus words)
📖 In the top 2% by bonus words
I played https://squaredle.com 01/07:
79/79 words (+15 bonus words)
📖 In the top 19% by bonus words
🔥 Solve streak: 105
Meh. I had to use hints this morning and I’m still working on that Kwanzaa puzzle.
I’m taking the current mini-scandal that the SecDef was hospitalized for a week, in the ICU even, and nobody even noticed as further proof that the agencies run themselves, and elected and appointed politicians matter little to how we are actually ruled.
Our self-perpuating federal bureaucracy would make the French blush but it’s been this way for quite a while.
On the flip side – French farmers are far more pampered by their govt than ours are.
You just now noticed?
“Further proof”.
agencies run themselves
That might be okay if the agencies were tiny with tiny agendae and very strict and unambiguous scope (eg: keep Lake Barkley between 350 and 360′ ASL). If DOD were so small that the Secretary knew when it was time to change lightbulbs in the Camp Benning shitter, I’m not sure that would be better. It’s all a matter of scope.
Things are stupidly overwrought today, but what would the right span look like?
The political layer at the top is thinner than the icing on a cake – and with less effect. The bureaucracy exists for its own benefit and purposes – the nominally in-charge person at the top will be stymied if at all at odds with the bureau’s ethos.
Just like Buttaplug taking multi month leave rather than resigning outright.
Hey, it takes some bodies longer to recover from pregnancy than others.
…wait…
Well, when a man tries to pass a bowling ball out his dick, there are bound to be complications.
And kidney stones are painful.
The disposability of the players, combined with the collusion between owners who at times have shown more loyalty to their billionaire peers than to their pursuit of competitiveness, should make watching NFL games a dispiriting hobby, like another old tradition. In the post-#MeToo era, we’ve become less eager to watch women objectified in beauty contests, so the audience for the 100-plus-year-old “Miss America” pageant has taken a hit. Typically, we grow out of established yet problematic institutions. We know better, then we do better. Yet with the NFL, we keep watching.
A woman wrote that? I never would have guessed.
The threat to bench Wilson was illegal, according to a letter sent by NFL Players Association attorney Jeffrey Kessler to the team back in November. The threat, Kessler wrote, also violated the collective bargaining agreement. More so, the threat should have been eye-opening. If a team can strong-arm Wilson — a franchise quarterback (meaning he’s the most important player on the roster), a Super Bowl champion (meaning he’s a winner) and a Walter Payton Man of the Year honoree (meaning he’s the epitome of the type of player and citizen the NFL wants to highlight) — then everybody in an NFL locker room is expendable.
Boo fucking hoo. Your time is up, hon.
Is this the first NFL season she has ever watched?
I wonder if she has even watched that much. I don’t know what happened to Wilson but he is a shadow of himself.
She only watched because of Taylor Swift.
Girls who didn’t know what a first down was 6 months ago now know what a shovel pass and flea flicker are.
Benching a player is illegal?
I somehow doubt that.
I wonder what sort of song Taylor Swift would sing after getting dragged through the coals by the IRS, or the NY AG’s office.
“Hit me baby one more time?”
a guy whose presence in a movie means it will be wonderful or horrible, never anything in between;
I was expecting Michael Cain.
At Foster’s request, the pair met at the Elle magazine Women in Hollywood celebration in November. “I reached out to Bella, because we’d never met, and said: ‘I want you to introduce me at this thing,’ which is a wonderful event about actors and people in the movies, but is also very much a fashion thing. Which means it’s determining who represents us.”
Foster said the event’s organisers were “very proud of themselves because they’ve got every ethnicity, and I’m like: yeah, but all the attendees are still wearing heels and eyelashes”.
Bless her heart.
Global warming is so bad nobody knows what to do when it snows. They have to be told by government experts.
Foster revealed how she had also challenged pervading gender stereotypes in her own family. Talking about raising her children, whom she had with her former partner Cydney Bernard, and now raises with her wife, Alexandra Hedison, she said: “There was a moment with my older one when he was in high school, when, because he was raised by two women – three women – it was like he was trying to figure out what it was to be a boy.
“And he watched television and came to the conclusion: oh, I just need to be an asshole. I understand. I need to be shitty to women and act like I’m a fucker.
“And I was like: ‘No. That’s not what it is to be a man! That’s what our culture has been selling you for all this time.’”
It’s good to hear from truly enlightened people who have outgrown lazily stereotyping others. Embrace the vast human rainbow.
Somehow, we never got the genders confused. I remember Doris Pierson, my lovely 2nd grade square dance partner. We both knew where we were on the boy-girl thing, seemed like all the kids got it right.
Checked the bike racks, girls rode the girl bikes, boys the boys’ bikes. There was never any doubt in .3Score’s mind.
I have a confession – I was riding bikes since before kindergarten and because boy bikes had the bar higher up, my first bike was my Aunt’s purple Montgomery Wards Hawthore girls bike. I got a boys bike as soon as I was tall enough to clear the higher bar on the boys bike frame.
I always thought that bar on the boys’ bikes looked rather…hazardous for them. 😖
Bikes are designed to kill their riders.
Sounds like the plot of a Stephen King short story.
I hope everyone is well. I got Dad Voice pulled on me yesterday, but it was pretty well deserved.
I had a monstrous week and am still fuming. Outpatient sent me to the ER against my explicit instructions. I needed 15-20 min to chill out. That isn’t what I got. I’m still fuming atop my tremulous (half-living) frame.
Hopefully I’m able to write about it today. I think it’s the only way out of hatred. I’m not responding well so far. I certainly shouldn’t be out on my own. Not thrilled to exist. Stubbornly, my body insists.
Dog
whistletoyFormer President Donald Trump on Saturday suggested the Civil War could have been avoided through “negotiation,” arguing that the fight to end slavery in the US was ultimately unnecessary and that Abraham Lincoln should have done more to avoid bloodshed.
“So many mistakes were made. See, there was something I think could have been negotiated, to be honest with you,” Trump said at a campaign event in Newton, Iowa. “I think you could have negotiated that. All the people died. So many people died.”
The former president’s comments come a little over a week before the first-in-the-nation caucuses in Iowa, where he has a significant lead in the polls over his closest rivals, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley.
And the media dog pack will work themselves into a frenzy over the latest chew toy.
He is a man-child. Impressed with his own intellect when there is no reason to be.
He’s a salesman and a deal maker at heart — and part of his shtick is that he can negotiate anything. Hence the bluster that he could have done it. That’s all it is.
And he may well be right — if Lincoln had held off on the Federal forts and let the South cool down and keep the Radicals from immediately pushing abolition, he might have been able to negotiate something — but Lincoln obviously wasn’t going to cede an inch of what he felt was part of the Union, and the South obviously had built up his reign of terror in their minds before he even took office (hence the secession before he did), so it is all pretty moot in the end. It might be possible, but it is damned well improbable even if Time Traveling Trump somehow popped up to tout his deal making skills.
And that’s about as worked up as I can possibly get on the subject… talk about a mountain out of an ant’s drawing of a molehill.
Taking Lincoln out of the equation, yes, we might have been able to negotiate a deal to end slavery w/o the war. But Lincoln was elected to END it, hence the Souths quick secession.
But, hindsight is 20/20.
Lincoln offered continued slavery if Confederates states would return to Union. They refused. Maybe extending slavery to every state would have worked. But is that negotiation? I guess we could have successfully negotiated WW2 by giving the Japs and Hitler everything they wanted too.
“No comment.”
Should be the reply to all of these gotcha questions.
The Civil War has emerged as unlikely talking point on the GOP primary trail. More than a week before Trump’s comments, Haley answered a question about the cause of the Civil War without mentioning slavery – the driving force behind the war. She has since backtracked, repeatedly saying she thought the fact went without saying.
Trump’s remarks were not made in response or reference to Haley’s.
In fact, there were a series of efforts before the Civil War began to cut a deal to save the Union. But the future of slavery in the South could not be settled through compromise and the nation went to war with itself. Trump did not say how he would have prevented the conflict, which he also called “so horrible but so fascinating.”
“It was, I don’t know, it was just different,” Trump said of the war. “I just find it – I’m so attracted to seeing it.”
Now feel free to explain away the hundreds of thousands of “scholars” who have smeared millions of words on paper since the end of that war.
GOP former Rep. Liz Cheney slammed Trump’s take on social media, asking how Republicans who have endorsed the former president can “possibly defend this?”
“Which part of the Civil War ‘could have been negotiated’? The slavery part? The secession part? Whether Lincoln should have preserved the Union?” Cheney wrote. “Question for members of the GOP – the party of Lincoln – who have endorsed Donald Trump: How can you possibly defend this?”
Modern Republicans traditionally point to Lincoln as a hero – a Republican hero – for his role in preserving the Union when the South sought to leave the fold rather than end slavery.
Grrrrrr. Rowfrowfrowf.
*shakes toy energetically*
And then Liz slipped into a closet and pleasured herself at the thought of a half million dead bodies.
Oh, I think she is pleasuring herself thinking of just one dead body…
Gotcha moment
Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., on Sunday wouldn’t commit to certifying the 2024 election results during an interview on NBC News’ “Meet the Press.”
While interviewing Stefanik, who serves in House Republican leadership, host Kristen Welker asked, “Would you vote to certify, and will you vote to certify, the results of the 2024 election no matter what they show?”
Stefanik should have replied, “There are no stupid questions, only stupid people.”
“Would you vote to certify even if the results are demonstrably fraudulent?”
“Would you abdicate your constitutional responsibility to verify that the election results are legitimate, thus committing an impeachable offense?”
I think it was Massie who came out the other day saying:
“Maine, Colorado, and other states that might try to bureaucratically deny ballot access to any Republican nominee should remember the U.S. House of Representatives is the ultimate arbiter of whether to certify electors from those states.”
Game is getting real.
Just imagine the existential horror liable to overcome a Washington Post writer who suddenly realized she could be “benched” or even “cut from the team” simply for filing stories which were demonstrably, obviously, wrong. Accountability for one’s performance is not fair.