Since we’ve had more than a few open post moments recently, I thought to go ahead and offer a weak, half-digested better-than-nothing review of the possible arc of federal office-holding over the term of the next president: who is that apt to be and through whom will he be forced to wade? Truth be told, I’m not really researching this much and am offering more questions than answers; I look forward to reading clearer thoughts from others in these areas. Note: most of this is sourced on wiki; links to sources are embedded.
We’re constantly crying through the comedy of this presidential campaign. The election is a long way off and we don’t have excellent barometers, but, as things sit, I must say that Mr Trump is in serious jeopardy. There’s little reason to believe that, in Electoral College terms, that anything has changed in his favor since the last time he flawlessly ran the midwestern gauntlet to 304: “We had a massive landslide victory, as you know, in the Electoral College.”
How many people even care enough to vote? A quick check finds these folks mustered 60M supporters:
the constitutional scholar before the stable genius
Barack Obama 70M
Hillary Clinton 66M
Donald Trump 63M
George W Bush 62M
Mitt Romney 61M
John McCain 60M
John Kerry 60M
Mr Biden is no Obama, but one might suspect that he is no more objectionable than Herself and therefore has a 66M base; the question, mail-fraud speculations aside, is whether he can get even more to the polls.
Meanwhile, do we think that the Fact of Trump™ has been even more exciting and attractive as the prospect of Trump? Everyone is entrenched: Trump’s approval rate is stunningly flat; it started bad but has gone nowhere regardless of missteps, triumphs, claims, rebuttals, or the virus. Trump plods along at 42% approval with 53% disapproval; we don’t know how many of these folk are likely voters, but it doesn’t matter: the numbers refuse to move. Trump’s core is resolute . . . as are his detractors . . . unless you believe that the last three months’ figures (a drop to 40% from 45) are meaningful reflections of something or just noise as he continues to bob around in his normal altitude.
Brasil sucks !
The virus also limps along static in this wise: it affects almost no one medically but everyone practically; but the death trend is noticeably down. Meanwhile, the question is which voters will blame whom for the problems; will Trump be seen as a savior undermined by governors, or will he be scapegoated as the man with the power who achieved little? Last year the inside team asserted 2020 was Trump’s to lose, but that was before the virus. Since then, we were told that higher temperatures and humidity, as well as direct exposure to sunlight, quickly kills the coronavirus, leading to hopes that the threat of the contagion could drastically recede during the summer months. That may well be, but, it seems like we can expect little progress: we’re probably half way through this year’s cases and deaths as attributed. So, even if the 2020 virus reaction results in fewer net deaths, a statistical possibility that can’t be confirmed or rejected before the election, it’s unlikely that either camp will be able to assess the damage, assert responsibility, or lead our escape in time for it to change the score.
may I sharpen your pencil ?
My guess is that school is still undervalued politically. Trump has started to scurry because, after all, education is mentioned nowhere in the Constitution, but school is the fact that will shape fall’s narratives. His advisors are correct: whether the kids go back to school will be the main normalizing milestone to move the needle on national emotions before the election. If kids are still at home and parents are coping with no great news in sight, that sort of sitzkrieg will be devastating to the collective mood. That said, the virus jury is out: it will be a pure gut call by voters as to whom to blame, but school probably paints in well over half the picture since virus deaths and dismemberments are mostly rumors of war so far.
Speaking of jurists, Ginsburg’s goose is cooked. Ginsburg has had several bouts with cancer in the past, including colorectal, pancreatic and lung cancer (but) she’d like to remain on the bench until she’s 90 years old. Even if she can tough that out, she’s 90 in 2023, smack in the middle of the coming presidential term; at latest, a 2024 retirement pretty much assures that this fall’s election picks both a president and her replacement.
As we think about which justice might check out and who might pick her replacement, the confirmation’s gallery is nearly settled. Team Red has a firm shot at 49, so it’s hard to imagine their losing the Supreme veto should Biden ascend. . . for now.
a serious showdown
Future iron-glove cage match: the 2022 Senate seats up for election include, as I write, 12 Democrats and 22 Republicans. Did RBG know more than we knew about holding out ‘til she’s 90? The three-banker in the side pocket would be Biden wins (60%?), Ginsburg lives until 2023 (20%?), the 2023 Senate goes blue (75%?), and a left-of-center justice is nominated and consented to (ergo 9%).
That’s all I’ve got for now; autumn awaits!
someone’s dehydrated
When in the course of human events…um… you know the thing.
I’m still guessing Trump. If Biden wins, no way does the Senate flip in two years unless mail-fraud is universal. More likely the House flips the red after the shit they pull.
At this point, I’m not making any predictions. The last one I said jokingly was that face masks would become the new t-shirt. We can all see how that turned out.
Does it help if I ordered two Glibs masks today?
I ordered two today as well. When the larger #ThisMaskDoesNothing and Freedom is Slavery masks went online, I decided more masks over a new video game.
I may make bad decisions.
We have glibs masks???
Where?
Redbubble?? When did my advice get taken?
Are you a wizard?
I can’t see Joe Biden winning an election. I just can’t. Too many people _know_ he’s incapable of being president. Blue diehards do not care, of course, but he’s gonna need a lot more votes than that. Bernie Sanders completely screws the Democrats. Biden would be long gone by now, but they know if they replace him with someone who isn’t Bernie, they’ll have open revolt.
I don’t see how Trump can win either. But that’s because he’s Trump. With Biden it’s because someone in Biden’s obviously diminished condition can’t possibly be president for very long.
So I don’t know what happens here.
So I don’t know what happens here.
Loading. . .
Mr Biden is no Obama, but one might suspect that he is no more objectionable than Herself and therefore has a 66M base; the question, mail-fraud speculations aside, is whether he can get even more to the polls.
I think Biden will generate the enthusiasm that Hillary Clinton had.
I know of some Democrats that are spitting mad at Trump and think there will be a groundswell of Democrats voting against Trump. Those Democrats are in states that will go Democrat (like Massachusetts), so I’m not sure they matter.
PROOFRAD!
I don’t think Biden will generate the enthusiasm that Hillary Clinton had.
I’m seeing a statistically insignificant trend of former Democrat’s turning to trump as this pandemic has progressed.
This is based on my former family members becoming Trump lovers from Democrat voters in at least the past 4 elections.
My mom was a Carter, Clinton, and John Kerry fan. Voted for Obama twice and Hillary. She is now posting Trump and ant antifa links on Facebook.
My sister drug me to a John Kerry rally in 2000. She now thinks Trump is being treated unfairly by the press and that COViD is being mishandled by the dem Governor.
The anti American and anti law and order rallies have disturbed my Union loving patriotic mom. The COViD response and lockdowns have my sister questioning CNN and Network news.
These are statistically insignificant but they are one mechanism that could create issues for Biden.
Shit, they are not former family members. Former Dem voter family members.
You need to PROOFRAD too!
😉
I have seen some talk from folks about how much they hate Trump’s handling of Lil Rona and that will not vote for him because of it. Those folks all seem to be Democrats, so they probably wouldn’t vote for Trump anyway.
The blue collar dems around this region were turned off by Hillary and a lot of them voted for trump. I see that still as well as more pissed at the shutdowns and fear.
It’s going to be interesting that’s for sure.
It’s going to be interesting that’s for sure.
Like the Chinese curse right?
Many more people than who openly shift alliegiance will quietly vote for Law and Order over Anarchy, and not tell anyone.
But those votes may disappear due to mail fraud
OnT where the “T” is your first graphic: The wooly worm pic made me nostalgic for one of Dayton’s most beloved weather dudes, who popularized the wooly worm winter weather prognostification thing. Taken from us too soon – RIP, Gil!
I’m also dying to know the story behind your latest handle, Don. Unless it’s a reference to something that happened during a Zoom chat (which, as we all know, STAYS in the Zoom chat.)
Dick isn’t a Dayton man.
I always heard that Gil died of the AIDS. Same with Dale Huffman.
The Founding Fathers of Monetary Destruction
I think Trump has, oh, a 60% chance of carrying the election. His numbers suck but Biden’s numbers are only as high as they are because his handlers have kept him locked up.
When the debates start, and Biden fumbles, mumbles and maunders through a reply, if Trump just will look directly into the camera and ask “…can anyone tell me what he just said?” At that point it’s over.
We’ll see. Mrs. Animal and I are advancing our Alaska plans regardless. 48 months at the outside.
Sounds like an article. Buying or building? Working or retiring?
Buying, working for a few more years but mostly planning retirement.
We are starting to formulate a similar plan.
I don’t think I have any firearms* of a large enough caliber to move to Alaska.
*Not that I have any firearms anyway, not since I tried to transport them all down the James** during a hurricane.
**Speaking of the James, oppressor, colonizer. ///Cancel the James River.
“I don’t think I have any firearms* of a large enough caliber to move to Alaska.”
Do better.
50 caliber handgun?
The answer to that seems obvious.
When I was fishing in Alaska I had to carry a shotgun just to go to the outhouse. Great place to visit but I wouldn’t want to live there.
Biden desperately needs a rock solid veep pick, and there just ain’t one. My money’s on Trump. Especially considering the state of the economy. Most people just want to get back to building their retirement funds and all the record positive numbers from the last 4 years. Nobody thinks Biden/Harris/what’s her name is going to deliver that. Push comes to shove, they wanna make their IRAs great again.
The BLMers want you to feel so guilty about having a 401k that you will not vote for anyone who might aid your attempt at saving and investing.
You don’t have to cancel the melanin deficient. The melanin deficient will cancel themselves.
VP Alex Ose was the first to go last week, according to The Daily Campus. She cited “the climate and incidents of racial injustice across the country and at the university” without elaborating on what’s wrong at UConn (or why she can’t address the perceived problem as an elected official):
Ose is also pressuring the remaining white members of the student government to resign, asking them to consider their “intent” in student leadership (to lead?) and whether they “truly” believe “they are making space for the voices that need to be heard right now” – the aforementioned BIPOCs.
President Joshua Crow didn’t go that far when he announced his own resignation prompted by white guilt two days later.
“It is important in this time to ensure that marginalized groups have the platforms they need,” he said, according to The Daily Campus. (Their paralyzing white guilt makes a little more sense when you consider that Crow and Ose beat a nonwhite ticket, Jase Valle and Guymara Manigat.)
A couple of virtue signaling pussies if you ask me. I’d say the student government will be better off without them but that shit’s meaningless anyway.
That’s why they’re at UConn, not Williams, or Yale.
Want to see what the future power-cravers look like? Look no further than the average US college campus.
How dare the people that voted for Alex and Joshua….vote for them?! It’s as if democracy doesn’t really work!
I see the fair maiden with the large bladder up there likes her B vitamins.
Or Gatorade
My thoughts:
1) No one who voted for Trump in 2016 will be seriously alienated by any of Trump’s actions since being elected.
2) Many did not vote for Trump in 2016 because they bought into the media’s predictions of Trump being unstable and ushering in Armageddon (e.g., nuking China). These predictions of doom did not come true so some of these voters may come back into play.
3) Trump would win easily in a fair election, but there will be massive voter fraud by the Dems on a level never before imagined. The question is if the vote rigging will be enough to overturn the election.
As a counterpoint, Never Trump Republicans have announced they’re doing media buys in Ohio to support Biden. The party has come a long way since the Reagan rule.
The pro war neocon never Trumpers are a universally hated liability. Democrats and Republicans alike can agree on hating the likes of Bill Kristol and small objects get trapped into orbit around my dome Evan McMullin.
But not since Weld can I remember someone in a political party supporting someone from another party. And I don’t think Weld was spending money to do it, these are ad buys, so they’re dropping coin to support Biden.
Same guys who drove the Weekly Standard into bankruptcy. Maybe they got some Koch money and Nick will be helping them.
These are ad buys by the likes of The Lincoln Project and other mendaciously named scum. I suspect the buys will target Russian collusion and the like and will do a fine job of convincing the already convinced.
The “never trump Republicans” are the clueless dopes who offered up McCain and Romney. The one thing that will never ever occur to them is that _everyone_ else hates them. There’s some old timers in the group that actually believe Nixon got a raw deal rather than a sociopath who got off easier than he deserved.
Trump is president because he made all the right enemies, and that doesn’t just mean Hillary Clinton. I don’t know how many electoral votes his making Jeb Bush look like a circus clown was worth, but it sure as hell wasn’t 0.
Agreed on all three points.
Here’s another thing. I know policy is super passe nowadays, its all about identity and what not. But let’s peruse some “Moderate” Joe Biden’s “moderate policies”
He’s gonna make Beto his Gun Control Czar.
He’s all in on the Green New Deal.
He’s gonna ban fracking.
He’s called for big tax hikes. Four times what Hillary called for.
Basically, the case for Joe stealing Trump’s thunder in the Midwest is that these people are so fucking stupid that they don’t actually pay attention to policy at all and will think Joe Biden’s actual calls for eco-socialism and bans on the AR15 don’t matter because hes an old white dude thats down with the union worker.
This is what scares me. Biden has a reputation as a moderate but he’s very left, just like the rest.
this is where tactics come in. Biden needs to run against Trump to win. Trump needs to run against ANTIFA and the authoritarian governors to win. I think Trump has the harder row to hoe. He’s up against an adversarial media, and he has to somehow paint Biden as being in bed with these people. Biden simply has to go “look at this insanity, look who is in charge”
If he can string those words together.
“look at this insanity, look who is in charge”
I’ve already seen that message on facebook, claiming that Trump is responsible for the Antifa/BLM riots.
Re (1) I know two who have been alienated. And I know no one who is voting for Trump who didn’t vote for him in 2016.
FWIW, I’ll be voting for the Cheeto after voting for GayJay. I know there are others on here who fall into the category, but I’m not naive enough to believe there aren’t those who have been swayed by the media coverage to leave Trump. To me the real question is how the electoral math works out on that on balance. Specifically, given that the election is likely to be decided by perhaps 10 (or so, give or take a few) key states, has Trump grabbed the necessary 10-20 thousand? Or has Biden?
There is evidence to support everyone’s own personal view, which is what’s crazy. The Press is unrelenting against Trump, Biden gets to hide because COVID, who will get the blame for that, and what about the black vote – which seemed to be swinging against the Donks because of the historically good economic news for that constituency. The D’s need that to win. Trump was pulling unheard of numbers for Team Red with blacks, Biden massively stepped on his dick (“if you don’t vote for me, you ain’t black!”) and then suddenly, coronavirus was the deadliest thing evahhh!!!!
It’s impossible to say with certainty what will happen. And COVID is also going to be used to justify rampant ballot harvesting. So, I’m going with my most recent prediction:
massive voter fraud, a lot of lawsuits that will ultimately declare a Trump win, Team Blue will say it is illegitimate (given the lawsuits that will surround the election), and massive rioting before the inauguration with the Dems claiming that Trump is “refusing to accept the results of the election.” And then the shit will really hit the fan.
I think there is a slim chance of a “silent majority” repeat a la Nixon in ’68, but given how things are going… I don’t know.
I’ve seen posts here and at TOS from people like me who voted for Johnson in ’16 who say they will vote for Trump this time around. No way does Jo jorgenson get 4.5 million votes like GayJay did in ’16. She’ll be lucky to crack a million. Most of those will go to Trump, if they vote at all.
I’ve been amazed by how many friends lately, especially women or husband-wife teams, feel us out, and when they discover that we don’t have TDS, they exhale and start talking about how they are Trump supporters. I think there are a ton of people out there, like those described in other posts, who will vote for Trump but won’t support him publicly or answer polls. My fear, as yours, is that the Dems aren’t overconfident this time like they were with Hillary, and are prepared to force by-mail ballots and then use these for fraud in an epic scale. Trump campaign should spend a bunch of their millions on an observer for each precinct in contested states to raise objections to any questionable ballot.
I have a neighbor on my street with two new political yard signs. One says “any functional adult 2020” and the other says “they all suck. We’re screwed 2020”. I chuckled.
So, I know this was linked in the morning links (by someone else even). But I feel the rage needs to be spread around some:
We need to re-close Ohio’s economy. Our brains can’t handle the reopening.
Would it be a violation of the NAP to beat this person down? They’re publicly arguing that I shouldn’t be allowed to leave me house for “non-essential” reasons.
Blah blah blah bandwidth. What a moronic argument …I mean damn.
Do they ever let electricians write op-eds?
Like electricians know how to write. Where’s their degree to show they’ve studied something?
Anode Lives Matter!
Fuck. Off.
Tina D. Bhargava is
an associate professor of public health at Kent State University, and a mental bandwidth scholar, teacher and liberator.USELESS!Yeah–she’s SOOOO liberty-minded, ain’t she?
The Clown Cars Are Fully Loaded and Dr. Fauci’s Is Leading the Parade
When it comes to the topic of clown cars, we’d say Dr. Fauci gets a limo version all to himself.
Yesterday he uttered the following incoherent babble, saying the recent surge in new cases is because the Virus Patrol didn’t go far enough in throwing 50 million Americans out of work:
“We did not shut down entirely,” Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said. “We need to draw back a few yards and say, ‘OK, we can’t stay shut down forever.’ …You’ve got to shut down but then you’ve got to gradually open.”
Got that?
What does this pretentious old windbag think – that the blooming, buzzing mass of a $21 trillion economy can be calibrated up and down by the week via some magical dimmer switch?
Never mind because he was then on to this preposterous comparison:
Fauci also said he expects the public to compare the Covid-19 pandemic to the 1918 pandemic flu, which killed around 50 million people, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Well, it so happens that the U.S. death rate from the Spanish Flu was 655 per 100,000 persons (675,000 deaths in a population of 103 million). That’s obviously orders of magnitude larger than the 39 per 100,000 deaths to date from the Covid.
In fact, the impact of the Spanish Flu was not only 17X greater in terms of the overall mortality rate, but it was also a true Grim Reaper in the sense that it struck across the entire age spectrum of the population (dark blue bars).
It actually started in the giant domestic military training compounds stood up by Woodrow Wilson to join a European war that was none of America’s business, but the virus did kill tens of thousands of 18-30 year-old draftees in their own barracks long before they got to the killing fields of France.
You can play with the electoral votes on 270towin.com
In my prediction, Biden wins. Trump needs to flip Florida from blue to red to win.
It really comes down to who shows up to vote. Black people prefer Biden, but aren’t motivated to go vote. Trump will siphon off more black votes, but probably not enough to help him. Young hipster douches prefer Bernie. They’re not putting down the bong to go vote for Biden. Rust belt union guys are all in for Trump. The Karens are terrified of the commie cough. They’ll be out in force for Biden. One possible factor is debates. Will people get a load of Biden’s mental decline?
It’s early. Four months is an eternity in politics. Polls tend to skew democrat. It’s scary to me how close it is.
Longer term, the Rs are fucked. You can’t ignore the demographic shift left. We’re so fucked, Luckily, I’m old and won’t have to live through it.
Don did NOT escape Slutty Sunday.
http://archive.li/njwCI
#5
Excellent choice. Also 9 and 23.
I like #2.
I think #4’s bikini top is false advertising. Her instagram page.
#8 – handlebars. Nice.
“I think #4’s bikini top is false advertising”
They’re good bolt-ons though.
Since then, we were told that higher temperatures and humidity, as well as direct exposure to sunlight, quickly kills the coronavirus, leading to hopes that the threat of the contagion could drastically recede during the summer months.
I wonder how much air conditioning skews the “conventional wisdom”. In my time in the Greater Phoenix Metropolitan Area, I had more annoying sinus and sniffle issues than I have ever had. Breathing all that recirculating used air over and over might be an issue.
My home AC has a much better filter than the shitty cotton mask I wear when forced.
war of the roses continues with my asshole neighbors installing cameras directed at my front yard. Sigh. Here we go.
Damn, sorry your neighbors have gone the asshole route.
So… what model of cameras did they put up? And are they technologically minded?
I like the way you think, homie.
I’m not suggesting anything. I’m just a geek who’s questioning if the people pointing cameras at someone else has them on an unsecured wireless network with the default settings enabled. And it could get really dangerous if they’re connected to the internet.
It’s good you aren’t suggesting it. Assuming a fictional person was interested, as a thought experiment, how would that person check on the neighbor’s settings?
It’s small and oval bodied with the led ring. It’s illegal to record audio without consent, so I’m tempted to bait them into disclosing any sound they might get. Either that or massive Trump 2020 signs blocking the view. If it had been rolling yesterday, it would have caught me telling them to go fuck themselves for calling my landlord and bitching him out for nothing. Strong evidence that I won’t put up with their shit, but no crime.
Funny thing. She’s asian ( I think Vietnamese) and she built a giant tall white plastic fence in the back. When the cops told me to try and be nice to them, I told them that I already was. I moved all my cars over two feet so she could build the “great wall of China!” The cops laughed out loud, literally
Yes CA is a two-party state (good on you for knowing that, seriously). If they aren’t technologically minded, I would start by checking to see if they’re broadcasting the name of their wireless network (SSID). Yes, hiding it won’t protect you from dedicated hackers, but if you have dedicated hackers coming after you, you aren’t using wireless. If there’s an SSID that’s broadcast, I would also check if it’s a secured or unsecured one. The next steps would depend on that. Keep in mind that joining someone’s network without permission can be a federal crime, and you shouldn’t do it.
I just spent several minutes looking for the screenshot I took at my parent’s old house where two neighbors were having a passive aggressive war through SSID names (Your Wife Has Great Tits; Yeah I fucked them; were two I remember).
yeah, there’s new wifi network that just popped up on my list, it’s secured. I’ve never seen that one and it’s got cg and dv in the alpha numeric name.
I would strongly recommend against Googling the name of that new wifi network to see what the defaults are. Paintballs are much cheaper.
What’s the beef over?
That’s just it, it’s literally nothing. She just complains non stop. She claims to find cat poop in her yard. There’s about 5 strays and raccoons, possums and small dogs around. No real way to know if it’s true. The thing that pissed me off was she told my landlord that my kid broke into a third neighbor’s house and damaged stuff. That’s just a lie. He was invited over there and accidentally broke a planter. My landlord is like 90 and his health is iffy. He don’t need this stress and there was nothing for the asian lady to gain by doing any of this. I told them ( her and her husband) to not ever call my landlord agiain and bring complaints straight to me. They got all bitchy and I told them to fuck off, loudly and agrressively. The husband puffed all up like he was going to fight me. I didn’t back down so they called the cops. I gotta assume they lied to the cops to get them out here, ” he talked mean to me” doesn’t seem like a good reason to show up.
Do you have any tannerite?
I assume having sex in your front yard would violate the local decency laws.
Depends what you look like.
We’re close to Hollywood, so we’d have to be better looking, I think.
If Lena Dunham could get work then you are over qualified.
Dammit, man!
Now I gotta go down a Clorox Colada….
procure some mannequin parts, dig up a part of your front yard in view of their camera, bury said mannequin parts.
^this
….except you might be violating some laws by digging in your front yard without having completed and environmental impact review first.
Post a sign in your yard that says, “Bold move cotton.”
70 Mil voted for Obama? Holy cow he was a good peddler of bullshit.
I wonder how many of those wanted to say they voted for the first black president?
every single one?
I hate white people (more). But to be fair, McCain!!! I don’t care if it makes me bad person, I’m glad he’s dead.
At Romney. Hard to image two more worthless candidates.
I hope they are roommates in hell.
“Back on your heads!”
You’re not the only one.
I’m a first amendment absolutist. McCain voted against the first multiple times, the only way I would have voted for him is if I was already dead, and my ballot was harvested.
Exactly. Fuck John McCain, and fuck Russ Feingold.
Feingold was the only senator to vote against the Patriot Act. He gets some credit for that.
Yeah, he was only interested in controlling peoples’ wallets.
/I keed…sorta.
I may have missed it being talked about here but Grant Imahara, the Asian Mythbuster, died of a brain aneurysm at age 49 last week:
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/grant-imahara-dead-mythbusters-host-was-49-1303101
It may have been mentioned a couple of times.
/picks up his own ass drugs
To be somewhat related (and less of a dick). PlutoTV (free) is doing marathons this month. Tomorrow is documentaries about the moon landing.
Nice, Pluto TV is the best free entertainment service on the interwebz.
What does this pretentious old windbag think – that the blooming, buzzing mass of a $21 trillion economy can be calibrated up and down by the week via some magical dimmer switch?
Hey, it worked for Ben Bernanke.
I have no flippin clue what’s going to happen. The approval ratings are meaningless. the polls are largely meaningless. IMO, it comes down to whether Trump can get a credible message out that pins this covid depression on the democrats. whoever takes the blame for the impending depression loses.
^ this…….And I think a strong argument can be made the over reach of unconstitutional mandates resulted in business’s shuttering and people losing their jobs unnecessarily. The more we learn about this virus the less the strong arming of the public makes sense. The karens will and have always been there, but the normal people are fed the fuck up.
My job requires me to be on Twitter. And Twitter of course is a constant barrage of “Trump personally murdered 150,000 people” and the like. I’m not sure I even have a reasonable cross-section of the population of Twitter on my feed much less a reasonable cross-section of the voting population at large.
I could believe a massive range of possible outcomes. Who knows?
Pol!s are all bullshit.
I heard Goya’s sales quadrupled since the ‘boycott.’
That would bode well for a Trump win.
Agreed.
Relevant: CNN MELTDOWN OVER GOYA FOODS
I gotta ask: Is ‘Cuomo’ an Italian gay slur, or something?
IMO, it comes down to whether Trump can get a credible message out that pins this covid depression on the democrats. whoever takes the blame for the impending depression loses.
Me too. It depends on whether there are enough people capable of filtering the endless barrage of “Trump’s fault!” and asking what, specifically, a theoretical Democrat would have done differently. And being able to see that the shutdown damage was caused by (mostly) Democrat governors and ivory tower eggheads who never missed a paycheck.
Don Escaped LøböT?
Bromance gone wrong? What happened?
nah: it’s a tip of the hat
he was on the vid Friday night and said something about the AnCap flag so I tuned up my avatar in tribute
Well then, carry on sport.
Baseball, Rona edition.
Mets-Yankees, from Yankee Stadium. Empty Yankee Stadium, except for the YES network crew. SNY crew is broadcasting from Citi Field, watching on a “video feed” (AKA TV. Might as well be in a bar). Fake crowd reactions whenever something happens; this being baseball, about every 5 minutes. Standout moment: between batters, up pop on-screen tributes to John Lewis and a NY Post fotog whose name escapes me at the moment. After which the announcer deadpans “a totally appropriate moment of silence for these two great men”.
Eh, it’s baseball.
In… fairness… it’s still pre-season (in July)…
It’s looking more and more like this will be the last season I can root for the Indians.
Could go the dot Indian route. A caricature of Krishna and Arjuna on the eve of battle. At least for one season.
Fellow Tribe fan here. I always looked at Chief Wahoo and thought “baseball” not “oppressed minority” but YMMV. I really actually don’t care what the team name is to be honest.
I had a relative play for them back in the 80’s, so I saw some really fucking terrible baseball. I did get to meet Bob Feller on the other hand.
If they’re going to rename it, the best suggestion I’ve seen is to rename it the Cleveland Tribe. Non-offensive, doesn’t alienate the existing fan base, and allows the same colors/iconography. If they do rename it and it’s not the Spiders, Tribe, or Colonizers. I may be out.
Just use the old laugh track from Full House.
*surfing gunbroker*
Me: “Honey, I need another P228, don’t i?”
Her: ” there’s already 3 in the safe. So, not unless there’s something extremely special about it. ”
*sigh*
Me: “The extremely special ones are more expensive.”
I hate gunbroker. It’s worse than pron. Stop
lookingbidding!It’s magic. I drunkenly bid.
And sometimes, a couple days later I get a shiny new thing.
It’s a good thing stuff doesn’t get delivered by one of those hotties from Black Rifle Coffee. My 401k would be $0.
Jeebus. I’m going broke tuning up what I have.
Yeah, I don’t know how the fuck so many around here can afford to shop for the bang-bangs as often as is implied.
I’m still waiting for the PS9 Daggers to be released, and even at $300, that’s a stretch for the budget.
Popped my Gunbroker cherry (and first time gun purchase) two days ago.
Did you bleed a lot? I sure did.
Nice!
What did ya win?
Without rehashing a whole exchange on glibs from a few weeks back, it’s a Beretta clone for the wife. She’s fired one before and liked it so wanted to get something she was familiar with.
I’ve got my eye on a Remington 870 but need to wait a few weeks until I’m back in my state of residence.
I have 870 of those.
/rimshot
I’ll be here
all weekuntil I get ban hammeredMe: “Honey, I need another P228, don’t i?”
Of course you need one!
P226 in SW .40
Well, until that canoeing accident when it went over.
Pluto TV is the best free entertainment service on the interwebz.
It was, until Bullock ads started running three in a row every four minutes. I don’t know where you are, but it’s ridiculous here.
Steve Bullock saved our rural hospitals! How were those rural hospitals doing, a couple of months ago, when Bullock ordered them to cease normal operations and stand by for the thousands and thousands of critically ill plague patients headed their way?
And-
I think the average non-college-educated “blue collar” barfly ( the sort of people I associate with, or used to, anyway) has a much better grasp of the economic situation than your garden variety political consultant. By miles and miles and miles. I’m desperately hoping they will give the BLM/DemocraticSocialist/ModernMonetaryTheory mob the electoral thrashing they so richly deserve.
No job? No gas money for the dirtbike/pickup/snowmobile. No lazy drunken afternoon floats on the Yellowstone or Madison or wherever. You’re fucking with people’s lives. And they do not like it.
Not just their lives… their vacations.
/has had two vacations cancelled due to this shite
***
No job? No gas money for the dirtbike/pickup/snowmobile. No lazy drunken afternoon floats on the Yellowstone or Madison or wherever. You’re fucking with people’s lives. And they do not like it.
***
Yeah, but will they blame the right people? Show up and vote? I hope so.
Her: ” there’s already 3 in the safe. So, not unless there’s something extremely special about it. ”
You probably need a couple of P225s. And P22os. Everybody does.
^^ on the watch list. ?
I think we all need 8F675s
The most Canadian way to get rid of bears
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6O33JRDumOM
electric guitars – is there any song they can’t improve?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjA5faZF1A8
That was fun. On a less hard rocking note, the melody to The Toys’ Lover’s Concerto (Later covered by The Supremes) was just outright stolen from Minuet in G by Bach.
If you’re going to steal something, steal from the best.
Hillsdale ignores asshole Governor. Good for them.
https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/education/2020/07/18/hillsdale-college-holds-person-graduation-defying-whitmer-nessel/5465916002/
Love that part.
“ defying Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, whose office earlier this week called the celebration illegal.”
IT’S NOT A FUCKING LAW YOU ASSHAT!
So I’m doing some genealogy and have hit roadblocks with general searches on the webz. Anyone have any advice on where to go next? I would hate to pay for information but would if it was valuable. Any advice is greatly appreciated, especially for immigrants from Italy and Germany.
The Mormons. They have the best genealogical records on Earth.
^This. They do it because they want to baptize their dead ancestors.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baptism_for_the_dead
***
Baptism for the dead, vicarious baptism or proxy baptism today commonly refers to the religious practice of baptizing a person on behalf of one who is dead—a living person receiving the rite on behalf of a deceased person.
Baptism for the dead is best known as a doctrine of the Latter Day Saint movement, which has practiced it since 1840. It is currently practiced by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), where it is performed only in dedicated temples, as well as in several other current factions of the movement. Those who practice this rite view baptism as an essential requirement to enter the Kingdom of God, and therefore practice baptism for the dead to offer it by proxy to those who died without the opportunity to receive it. The LDS Church teaches that those who have died may choose to accept or reject the baptisms done on their behalf.
***
Yep. As long as you don’t live in Utah, you can request microfilm be sent to a local LDS library. But check for vivid closures
When my parents went to Salt Lake City (SALT LAKE CITY) whenever they mentioned they were from Cleveland, they were always asked if they knew where Kirtland was (about four exits away on the freeway, and we spent a lot of time fishing at Holden’s back in the day).
Holden Arboretum. Many a childhood afternoon walking around there with my grandparents.
Also, driving around Cleveland/Shaker Heights with my grandpa Jack Kelly. He’d just drive us cousins around town in his Ford. We’d go down to the Flats, stop in different bars, diners, shops whatever. He’d pop in a place, and everybody was shit howdy happy to see him. Then back in the Ford. The man cussed the entire time he drove. Cussed at every driver, every pedestrian, every stoplight, every everything. My brother and my cousins loved it. We learned to cuss from one of the best.
Cheers to Jack Kelly, a good man. *clinks glass*
Holden is where I learned to catch bluegills, pumpkinseeds, and crappies. My parents were members through my chlidhood. I still remember the maple candy as a staple from there.
Dumb question about Mormons, do they have records on people that weren’t Mormon?
yes
https://www.familysearch.org/en/
Yes
I’ve read that Mormons have the best records on Korean genealogy. I’m pretty sure their records – for the modern world – are about the best you could ask for.
Sadly you have to pay for most of the stuff, especially international. If you have a unique surname try searching Google and Google Books. I came up with some interesting stuff with my family name. If you have German relatives there are a few good military records sites.
This is for WWI casualties: http://des.genealogy.net/eingabe-verlustlisten/search?lang=en
I do have some German ancestors, but they emigrated between the Civil War and WWI.
Do a search for “Soldiers and Sailors Database” if you suspect any ancestors served in the Civil War. Uncommon last names have best shot at being found more easily. If you get a real hit, there are ways to order copies of your ancestor’s military records from the National Archives.
State historical society and/or state archives will hold birth, death, marriage and a ton of others.
Might not help you, but the first place I would look for my ancestors would be prison records.
Might be possible after some digging.
IB: I MIGHT be able to give you some further ideas but would need to know names, places, etc. I assume you don’t want to dox yourself but you can get my e-mail from TPTB. If you want.
Thanks Raven. I will keep that in mind.
Johnny Cash and steam locomotives – 2 great things that are even better together
Wabash Cannonball
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZiQ89_s67Q
Not a big Cash fan. Never cared for his voice except in few songs. The covers always seem better to me.
Ah, but his cover of Hurt eclipsed the original: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AHCfZTRGiI
comment gold: If they don’t play this at my funeral, I’m not going.
Not bad. I’ve seen the funeral comment on too many songs. It’s like the you tube commentators have drugs falling out of their ass.
/blink
/blink
I
/blink
Huh?
Hmm. I don’t see how anyone could sing Folsom Prison Blues better than Cash.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Xyp63MaSBs
I remember being on date and the gal said she liked country. I asked her if she liked Johnny Cash. She said “who?”
Things went downhill from there.
There’s this
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6zY-T1IhN88
Roy Clark does a pretty good version as well. It’s a matter a personal tastes.
I like this version of ring of fire.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6zY-T1IhN88
The bass singers are great.
I link this version.
Did you ask her which country she likes the best?
Points for flair
1977 Toyota Celica GT: Regular Car Reviews
Interesting analysis Don. I think the school situation may play out differently than you suspect. I think most voters realize that decision is made by the governor. There may be more “fuck you” votes in states with kids forced to stay home. It’s not rational to vote for Trump because you are mad at your governor but I suspect it may be one of few outlets available to voters.
Yeah, but will they blame the right people? Show up and vote? I hope so.
You and me both.
Watching Chuck Todd slit his wrists on live teevee would just be the start of the rollercoaster ride.
This evening’s bit of Japanese weirdness. Pan Piano
I’ll pick a Glib appropriate (i.e cleavage) video here: ソードアート・オンラインⅡ OP IGNITE 藍井エイル Sword Art Online II [ピアノ]
She started out playing piano covers of anime songs. Usually Japan is pretty tolerant of fan derived copyright infringement, but she is cresting into 800K plus views. What cracks me up is in the last year or so she seems to have stated cosplaying characters associated with the songs. These costumes go for hundreds of dollars apiece.
Actual song here BTW – 藍井エイル IGNITE
She’s pretty good, and has an hour-long version of To Zanarkand!
Great (((article))).
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/new-truth-rationalism-religion
“What we are witnessing, in the rapidly transforming norms around race, sex, and gender, is not an argument at all but a revolution in moral sentiment. In all revolutions, the new thing struggling to be born makes use of the old system in order to overthrow it.”
Basically, the revolutionaries are using a patina of rationality and leftover good will from “the institutions” (academia, science, the press) in order to destroy that very rationality.
I’ll assume this is an homage to my posting it during GlibFit.
https://tinyurl.com/yyrzz5pz
NSFW.
The redheads are Yusef’s thing but I appreciate the effort.
Trump will win or lose the election based upon blue collar labor in the rust belt. Just like in 2016.
There is no way in hell that the rioting and looting from Antifa and BLM will sway blue collar labor to vote democrat and not Trump.
I haven’t seen a single Biden sign in Iowa.
Not even in Iowa City. I mean it’s no Madison but still a college town.
Yeah I still don’t see these supposed millions of Trump voters who are switching to Biden. What’s more likely is Trump gets talked into some kind of immigration sellout in October, and that costs him his base, but they will stay home, not vote Dem. If Biden gets every Hillary vote, but Trump loses 5 million because he let Jared Kushner talk him into DACA 2.0, then he will lose.
If (and it’s a big ‘if’) there’s any coherent tactic to win at the DNC (because ‘strategy’ is clearly beyond them), it ought to be to raise the turnout among non-whites, suppress it among whites and flip suburban white women who voted Trump to Biden and whatever VP (corpse of RBG might motivate them). Some combination of the above, in addition to Boomer attrition from combined effect of four years passing and The Plague should get them couple states that were wobbly last time.
Oh, and mail-in ballots. Can’t forget mail-in ballots.
Maybe you’re mistaking Biden signs for garden gnomes.
I’m smack dab in the middle of the rust belt. I saw my first Biden sign on Saturday on my way home from a spin class. Meanwhile, there are trucks in the neighborhood who have permanent Trump 2020 signs mounted in the bed.
The factor that might change that is that Biden is NOT a lot of things herself was. He can portray himself as “Joe from Scranton” pretty well. Kind of like Bill Clinton and even LBJ.
I live in Ames and see one all the time driving up and down Duff Avenue. (The people there are friends of my wife; the patriarch of the family is a staunch Dem, formerly on the school board.) Fortunately, it’s only one.
Nice, Don. Two things I wonder about: will some team blue voters will stay away from the polls out of fear of catching corona and will some team red voters stay away out of fear of catching a bike lock.
Where would red votes matter that intimidation could happen? Philly maybe? Not like red votes get counted there anyhow.
Suburban Ohio and Pennsylvania theoretically.
If RBG kicks off before the election, things will get even crazier than they already are (which is pretty fuckin’ crazy).
Question:
With the
revised rulesbullshit swirling around vote by mail or whatever you want to call it, is there even any point to doing old-fashioned election night coverage?Personally, I think any ballot not received and certified by midnight of the officially designated election day should be thrown into a giant bonfire.
But I can already see the squirming, sweaty claims about “let’s wait until ALL the votes have been counted before we call a winner.”
Yeah the nightmare scenario from a rule of law/legitimacy standpoint is Trump wins the same states he won last time around by similar margins, and then in the coming weeks the urban blue machines in FL, PA, and OH start “processing mail-in ballots.” and announce in December that actually Biden has won those three states and is thus the President.
Boxes of votes will be “discovered” until the preferred outcome is achieved.
Soyattle is still under siege.
At least two people were arrested in Seattle and a police officer is in the hospital Sunday after a march through downtown devolved into property damage and looting, police say.
Police said Sunday evening the demonstrators had broken out several windows of the East Precinct, then threw a device into the lobby that ignited a small fire.
The fire was later extinguished and no injuries were reported, police said.
The demonstration started between 2 and 3 p.m. near the intersection of 3rd Avenue and Pine Street. A photo posted on Seattle’s DOT traffic channel showed crowds blocking an intersection.
Around 2:30 p.m., Seattle journalist Katie Daviscourt tweeted a video of a crowd of people outside an Amazon Go building. Several people were seen spray-painting the building while others tried to smash the windows.
“Antifa Militants and Black Lives Matter rioters are breaking into Amazon Go Downtown Seattle,” Daviscourt tweeted. “This protest has turned into a riot.”
Lessons learned – Molotov cocktails are shitty incendiaries, unless they’re assembled and deployed with great care.
The mayors of Seattle and Portland are claiming the violence was waning and they were punching themselves out. What a strategy: the arsonists will get bored eventually.
Durkan’s Summer of Love.
This came out good enough that it might need a real name.
Moscow Mule Variation
2oz. Tito’s vodka
1/2oz. Licor 43
Juice of half a lime
Stir over cracked ice in a copper mug. Fill with Reed’s Extra ginger beer. Try to resist the temptation to hammer it in one swig.
Ice cream maker slushie cocktails.
/doesn’t drop the drink
I don’t have an ice cream maker.
I do have some ice cream, though.
If you like frozen drinks (or the concept of frozen drinks), get one. First off, you can make good homemade ice cream, gelato, sorbet, or sherbet. Second, any cocktail you like (with a Brix 13-15, and with cheap alcohol) can be tossed in for 30 minutes to make slushie drinks.
Regret Sex, So Now Rape.
STEVE SMITH ON BEACH
♫ HIS NAME STEVE SMITH AND HE DANCE-RAPES ON THE SAND!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTizYn3-QN0
Nice.
Done, and done.
I bet Trump. I would also wager that there will be no live debates. Biden will claim that it needs to be done virtually so grandma doesn’t die and the press will cover for him. In the virtual debates he won’t do so badly as he will be reading every answer from a teleprompter. Trump’s advantage is not what it was in February, but I’d still give him a 60-65 percent chance of winning. He has incumbency and supporters that are more fired up as well as the ability to put The Fear into the soccer mom crowd that the defund the police thing will come and make their kids unsafe. It’s his race to lose, and he absolutely can do that, but I would take more bets on him if they present themselves.
I still think there’s no way in hell the media can carry the water of “no debates”. That’s an intrinsic part of the process, I’d argue every single American voter watches the debates, or at least turns them on for a while on plays on their phone, or catches the highlights on their propaganda outlet of choice.
Plus, from a straight up business standpoint, the ratings and ad dollars are enormous for the networks. They will try to stack the audience, the moderator, the questions, and have live “fact checks” and “context” but they need the audience to watch.
There will be debates. They just will be done virtually, not in front of a live audience with live questioners. It will be done virtually so the Biden team can more easily feed him his lines.
I doubt Trump agrees to that. His campaign would just mock “chicken” Joe mercilessly until Biden agreed to the real thing.
^^This. Or he’d throw a rally during the “debate” and play up to the crowd during his answers.
Excellent – that would hilarious – mugging for a giant crowd while Joe hides in a basement.
Where ya goin?
Around 2:30 p.m., Seattle journalist Katie Daviscourt tweeted a video of a crowd of people outside an Amazon Go building. Several people were seen spray-painting the building while others tried to smash the windows.
“Antifa Militants and Black Lives Matter rioters are breaking into Amazon Go Downtown Seattle,” Daviscourt tweeted. “This protest has turned into a riot.”
Maybe they needed some more juice boxes.
When will Amazon and Starbucks bail on Seattle and plunge the city further back into the Dark Ages? Has to be a matter of time at this point.
I’ve been wondering the same thing. I think for Starbucks it have to get a lot worse. They are all aboard the progtown train. I don’t get the same sense about Amazon.
Starbucks will be taken care of when Americans stop liking shitty, burnt coffee.
And, I say this as someone who quaffed several caramel macchiatos in my younger days.
#FuxTheBux
More contributions to BLM.
When will Amazon and Starbucks bail on Seattle and plunge the city further back into the Dark Ages? Has to be a matter of time at this point.
I’m surprised Bezos hasn’t bought an island by now.
Seriously. Bezos could have his own island nation if he wanted.
I do rather like the idea of progs freaking out about Amazonia, the first corporate-owned nation since the British East India company was ruling the subcontinent.
amusing minimalist military recruiting ad from 1979
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKpZOA76l0s
I was already 3 years into retirement and just starting my second life after graduation from college.
How’s the honey harvest looking?
I could have gone to boot camp with any of those Marines in that add (except for the WM). I was the same rank in 1979 – I spent the entire year stationed in Japan too.
Now they have commercials where they pretend the military is like playing Call of Duty, ignoring that soldiers in Iraq or Afghanistan don’t to hit ‘restart’ if they get hit in the head with an AK round.
Speak Like Darth Vader with Sulfur Hexafluoride
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7XdOyZIkko
opposite effect of helium
Had some guys pulled out of a SF6 space. The docs strapped them in bed and turned them head-down. SF6 is heavier than air and can’t be exhaled.
Heard a similar thing about propane.
Pew, pew.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EdTuwDgXkAYFGvQ?format=jpg&name=900×900
Why do you hate my liver straff? I see that, and think I need a drink to even shut off enough brain cells to engage with that.
A little harder to aim, but you almost never have to reload.
and when you run out of ammo (theoretically), you have a boomerang
Nice.
Given our conversation a few days ago I immediately thought of you with this:
TW – you may need to turn down the sound.
Even When Apart
Gah! Made it 2 minutes in. *shudder* BTW, it’s Chikubi 96 and not AKB 48.
I’m impressed you made it that far.
It’s even too treacle for me.
Only 1M views? They’re slipping.
Well it’s only a month old…
Says something about their 2.4M subs…
Look, Yukarin pulls 250k on a channel she started in February.
Bonus photo shoot for Glibs…
【水着】初公開！柏木由紀のグラビアルーティン
I need a guide to keep the faces, names, and nicknames straight of all the current and graduated AKB48 members.
Yukarin is pretty much a goto nickname for Yukari for a young woman.
I have two friends named Yukari and when one of them was younger was called Yukarin.
That made my penis so yuge, I’ve got multiple offers to do Pron. Thank you, but I think I’m going to pass out from blood transfer.
HAM radio enthusiast contacts space station
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpZqaVwaIYk
I’ve never done it, but I’ve been meaning to try someday
I don’t get the attraction.
*tears up QSL card for Chafed*
You just like the typing, don’cha?
of talking with the ISS or of ham radio as a whole?
I mostly agree with you on the latter. I have my license for one reason only… regional emergencies. whether that be severe weather or more serious infrastructure issues.
So, do I look for the ‘radio operator’ license plates with a H&H or glibs sticker, when I’m out an about?
We had a full evening planned, so I haven’t been around to enjoy the conjecture and repartee. I’ll look this over and see what I learn and maybe catch up later.
My best to all, and have a great week!
Learn?
Just don’t ask what goes in the boxcars.
https://twitter.com/sunrisemvmt/status/1284658003455737856
Nice reply:
“It’s an 8 h 15 m train ride from Paris to Berlin on high speed trains. You can drive the speed limit from NYC to Columbus in 8 h 22 m. The distances are roughly the same. We have high speed trains and everybody owns their own.”
We just need to move the entire population of the US into the NE quarter.
It’s all about scale,
Hey Yusef. We weren’t playing, just passing by, but this is near the top of Aspen mountain: https://imgur.com/Nr3gAX6
Thanks! that’s really cool! Yellow Hi vis Baskets too…
I’ve been on vacation in northern California and Oregon for the last week. Lots of Trump flags and only one small Biden sign. Granted, I’ve been in the redneck areas for the most part, but I’ve also been in Eugene and Bend. There certainly is an enthusiasm gap.
Saw my first Biden flag after several Trump flags.
Seen more W and Obama bumper stickers than either Trump or Biden.
If you drove up 97, there’s a guy just south of La Pine that’s, uh, not a fan of the Forest Service or abortion.
WW2 – Avro Lancaster Crew Radio during bombing mission
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MF5_hvE4WEA
Lots of stiff upper lips – stoicism at its finest
This is fucking spooky, listening now, and I know what they did, Damn….
Back in the day I worked on a design crew with an older engineer, who spoke in a heavy Scottish brogue, who had worked on the design of the ventilation system for that aircraft. Amazing equipment is it’s day.
I have been lucky enough to see B17, 24 and 29 interiors, absolute works of art, the SR71 is a maze of dials,
I don’t believe you – there’s no way you could have understood what he was saying to do work together.
/snark
Ha ha! When I first transferred to that design team I believe they hadn’t yet decided who I would be assigned to work with. After they saw me talking with the Scotsman, and seeming to understand what he was saying, they assigned me to work with him.
Maybe it’s my exposure to a few different languages which makes accents less difficult for me to catch?
Given the population of the UK at the time I feel like the engineers there really punched above their weight.
My high school English teacher was an Army Air Corps veteran who flew daylight bombing raids over Germany. A huge inspiration in me becoming a pilot. When I was through with flight school – and he was retired from teaching – I went back home on leave and visited him. We sat on his porch drinking iced tea and I coaxed some stories out of him. Egads, I can’t imagine what that was like.
I’ve been shot at while in the air once – and I was a pax in the back at night – and I have to confess, it was one of the scariest moments of my life, and I’ve seen more than a few, including surviving a helo crash. But seeing those tracers searching the sky for us made me pray with a fervor that I’ve only matched one other time in my life: when my first daughter didn’t breathe after being born.
You don’t know helplessness and throwing it all to Fate until you’ve been shot at while in the air. Fuck me, I get nauseous if I relive that memory.
One of my HS teachers was a belly gunner on a B29.
I can’t think of much worse. The claustrophobia of the turret, getting stuck in the damn thing when the electrics get all shot up, the exposure there, and finally the bird’s eye view of everything coming at the aircraft.
He was an Augustinian brother and one of the gentlest people I’ve met.
Ugh meant B-17!
The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner
Randall Jarrell – 1914-1965
From my mother’s sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.
Outside of the WWI poets (Sasson, Owen, and such) that is one of the few 20th-century poems that stuck with me from college.
I much prefer the Romantics.
Yeah, those belly gunners were out of their minds.
I’ll fly the thing, but sit in a terrarium and get shot at while at 28,000 ft?!!?
NO. FUCKING. WAY.
Peter Schiff, tearing it up!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvkSzzmp1D8
Here’s a prediction, and it might happen and will be eye-rolling hilarious:
Late August Trump announces that there is a successful vaccine for covid (perhaps the Oxford-AstraZeneca one?) and we can start inoculating high-risk people beginning in October.
Democrats immediately start an all-out media war that ‘it’s not safe! it won’t work’!
And in doing so, by always having to be the opposite of Trump, the Dems and Media will all suddenly become the anti-vaxxers.
You Nazi. What are all the girls (and beta boys) with useless degrees going to do?
Get real jobs? Stop whining? Grow up?
No. They are going to join the Covid-Communist Party.
We are talking about in reality, not in their parents’ fantasies.
then Starve, that’s reality kiddies,
Same as they’ve been doing for a while now: “Will that be a Grande or a Venti?“
“What’s that in English?”
“‘Pretentious’ or ‘Condescending.'”
Lol. Nice GT. Very nice.
I had a frosty morning last Saturday. Wife wanted a Chic-Fil-A, I said no thanks. She didn’t go and was pissy about it. She went this weekend, and I asked her if she shined any shoes. Today, she went shopping for the weekly groceries, and came home pissed. I said, so Amazon for the non-perishables and Whole Foods for the fresh stuff? She said yes. Ummm, Bezos owns Pravda (aka WaPo). Enjoy the new normal.
No Starbucks,Home Depot, Kroger, or Publix for me.
I no grokk.
Nope.
Ah. Well, he’s rich, and can afford to signal any virtue he likes.
And I was wondering why the line was much shorter around the parking lot last time I drove by.
Probably got to get out of the car for them to reach your shoes (effectively).
That explains it.
Arthur C Clarke makes very accurate predictions about the future of computers in 1974
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTdWQAKzESA
Prognostications from science fiction sources regarding the capability of tech tend to be self-fulfilling prophesies as people either consciously or subconsciously try to make it work.
I know have an urge to become a sci-fi author and write about libertarian utopias.
There’s a miniature undersea city a la Rapture already: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3qqO8yQswg
that was very cool,
way cool
Well, not only was the man a superb storyteller, he also was one of the prime scientists who brought us satellite communications.
There is a book I ask about, occasionally, that might have been by him, but I don’t know. Someday I’ll find it. If anybody knows, the book was about a brother and sister team sent to administer a backwater Earth by some corporation that had bought it. I remember it because the author described the tech newcomers sending IMs and looking up info and maps, etc, using their spaceship as a communication hub. But this book I read in the 1980s, so… pretty ahead of it’s time. Anyway, if anybody knows the book, please tell me. The powers that be have my permission to realease my email to you.
“Fordham student punished for holding gun in Instagram photo memorializing Tiananmen Square massacre”
https://www.thefire.org/fordham-student-on-campus-probation-for-instagram-photo-holding-a-gun-memorializing-tiananmen-square-massacre/
Sounds like Fordham is one of those shithole universities all good thinking people need to stay away from.
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/07/18/national/actor-haruma-miura-obit/
Well fuck. Only 30. Found hanged in his closet so…
It’s too bad the Eternal Zero wasn’t released into the US (as far I know). Quite a good movie and deserves wider recognition.
That was a weird one. Maybe he just hated being a 三十路.
real Moby Dick is an albino orca
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEc8-wRrnNg
Cliff Notes to Moby Dick as Chicago blues.
We need more people like her.
“Git back on tha’ plantation, ya hussy!”
There are plenty of people happy to destroy art that they don’t like.
black lives matter painted on the pavement or wall is not art.
Why not? it was commissioned and installed by the city same as any other public art project – statue/fountain/mural. It may not be ‘good’ art and one may not like the message but that’s no defense for defacing public property.
Was it a ‘commission’, or, a ‘retro-commission’?
/better to get forgiveness than permission
The mayor helped paint it and is credited with pushing the idea. It was done officially as far as I know.
Ah. Well, there ya go. Maybe the Mayor should sue the critic?
Huh. I wonder what specific section of the city charter gives him the right to commission and pay for an art installation al by himself, or alternatively, gives him immunity from vandalism charges?
But seriously, the mayor of America’s biggest city is painting political messages on the street outside a building owned by a president of the opposite party. I have never seen this kind of division. I don’t know how this country survives.
I don’t know how this country survives.
it doesn’t. the only question is when does everybody else realize it?
it doesn’t. the only question is when does everybody else realize it?
Why would they? Are you sure we don’t live in Idiocracy?
Reminds me of grass in the Army. Don’t walk on it or you’ll get yelled at.
I’m sorry–what the shit is going on here?
Apparently a judge was seen….just not by the family. Or, something like that.
Yeah, ex parte order for a non-convicted person is beyond the pale. So is demanding she sign such an agreement. Like traffic citations, requiring a signature needlessly creates confrontation.
Not to mention these idiots cannot think through to what the logical result of their thuggery will be- namely people who don’t have symptoms, hell even people symptoms, will not get tested for fear of being placed under house arrest. Good job Hardin County health dept.
How the hell can the judge still be on the bench after this?? Get them an attorney for both sides (criminal and civil), stat!
It’s settled law, I think, since Typhoid Mary. The difference being that typhoid is actually dangerous.
COVID is dangerous, too. The degrees are different between the two, but, there have been plenty of people who’ve died due to getting sick from it.
Sure. But it’s certainly less dangerous than the flu, and we don’t allow petty dictatorships every winter.
I dunno, man….CDC puts US deaths due to flu at between 12k and 61k annually, for the last decade. COVID has well over 100k in a half-year.
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html#:~:text=While%20the%20impact%20of%20flu,61%2C000%20deaths%20annually%20since%202010.
Lest I be seen as a gov apologist, this is not me advocating for lockdowns, etc. Just trying to keep the numbers as straight as I can, and trying to assess threat.
There IS the issue of “died with COVID” being conflated with “died of COVID”. And if I remember right, New York was counting “probable COVID deaths” – e.g. an old person died of some kind of respiratory distress, even if they were never tested for the virus.
I’m not saying that the virus is of equal or less severity than the regular flu… But in keeping with what we all know about governments in general: if this is the fraud we know about, it’s probably just the tip of the iceberg.
Oh, very true–follow the $ is very applicable in this situation. Plus, as much as I hate it, there seems to be an element in the press that might be close to 100%, that want the numbers to be high. Gotta stick it to OMB and his cretins.
All this said, a vaccine can’t come quickly enough.
“they are prepared to let us get sick and die.”
Your group? Damn skippy I am.
They love your children so much.
In a stunning turn of events, the local teachers union single-handedly destroys public education.
So, home-steading, it is, then…
Wait ’til they start requiring bubble suits and rape whistles for ever third person, as well as pink triangles and gold stars….for the ‘special guests’.
/joke….or, not?
Name names…. and home addresses .
Business Round Table went woke a couple of years ago.
I guess we gotta start up a Resistance-type stock buying group to oust these shit-heads.
I’m sure there’s money to be made in that. I wish I knew the first thing about it.
Seen any stories about customers/shoppers being asked to leave? Or stories about stores being fined or shut down in states with mandates? In WA, it has been mandatory for a while. I see people enter stores, then put on the mask and others that have it under their nose or chin. I wonder if companies are prepared to kick people out and if they will require their entry-level/minium wage employees to be the ones to kick people out.
https://www.theblaze.com/news/lyft-driver-attacked-punched-spit-face-mask
https://www.theblaze.com/news/mcdonalds-workers-report-verbal-and-physical-assaults-for-asking-people-to-wear-masks
https://www.theblaze.com/news/louisiana-man-allegedly-runs-his-car-into-officer-who-told-him-to-wear-a-mask-in-walmart
Not all alike, but…well, the common theme. Plus, all the public freakout vids of people refusing to wear them.
As $6 mug shots go….I’ve seen better.
Hell, I’ve snapped better–the jailer needs some photography classes.
http://archive.li/uJX9j/95b0e76083a13012755ce1f61a7200c6afb124ae.jpg
NSFW.
http://archive.li/21jIz/3174ba4e342b67d22dc78f1d94d4130caffb2b8b.jpg
NSFW.
http://archive.li/E0xYQ/4163f478e9e2fd88d38e6022aaf468a74b9b9845.jpg
NSFW.
http://archive.li/obg0N/adda1b4c8c70271b0e6ea8b5a2c149cf22349e7c.jpg
NSFW.
Redheads, C’m on Popcorn!, where’s my redheads?
Checking in late.
Good analysis, Don. Challenges my confirmation bias. So, fuck you, and thank you, for that.
I expect the DemOp narrative to be that he’s doomed, as ever. The fact(?) that Trump is the best on offer is depressing, no doubt.
But think of all the fun we are having………………
We may not be living in the best of all possible timelines, but you have to admit that it is at least interesting.
It’s so depressing that I’m voting for Trump. I’d rather vote for that blowhard as an indictment of the modern US political scene than vote for some holier-than-thou elitist that funnels money into personal riches while pissing on my leg and telling me it’s raining.
Firstly–heh (for the new avatar)
B: while it’s nice to imagine righteous politicians, I find it rather fitting that DJT is Prez, as it encapsulates what politics actually is. I’m hoping that, even for a few, it sticks in their craniums….crania(?) that you shouldn’t go around worshiping politicians. These cults of personalities are ugly, and, inevitable when some people demand to be taken care of at the expense of others.
That, or course, isn’t made any better with him in the office, but….well, it does kinda make me laugh, at the expense of those so disgusted by him, but, so enamored by Clinton/Obama.
Yeah, that sums it up. If this ship is going down anyway, I’m going to go laughing.
Paging Chafed, for training: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cx2ZVl49YWI
Also….”she”?
Saw this at RCP (sorry if it has already been discussed)
Police officer talks about his experiences during the protests
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2020/07/17/portland_police_officer_what_its_like_to_be_a_black_officer_policing_portland_protests.html
So the protests and posturing isn’t leading to improved race relations? Shocking!!
It is very telling that the protesters are mostly white.
And are organized to silence those who are having civil discussions with police.
So, people who act as authoritarian as the cops they hate. With a side of identity politics thrown in, for good measure.
The interaction he describes at the 3:55 mark should be on every news program.
Bah–he’s a
Blackcop; no one cares what he thinks.Glad to see you finally coming around
TBF–after 20 years of working with cops, I tend not to care, myself.
He’s is also just a guy that has lived in that area his whole life (or so it seems). You think his perspective on his neighborhood being destroyed would be valuable.
I’m in an odd mood. I found out an hour ago that my niece tested positive for COVID19. She’s young and healthy so odds are in her favor.
But she was at my dad’s funeral and rode back in the minivan with us for over an hour while coughing maskless.
I had to call my company hotline and was instructed to quarantine at home for 14 days post exposure.
In other words, I’ll be sulking, I mean working, from home this week.
I took my own temp and it’s 96.5. I took it agIn with another thermometer. Sho nuff, 96.5.
Ewww….damn, ma’am. Sorry for her sake, as well as your’s, and the family as a whole. Stay vigilant, and take care of yourself.
Thanks—I’m guessing we will all be fine. There were a couple of frail individuals who attended, despite void efforts to have a small gathering. I hope they’re ok.
BTW, given what you’ve learned, vs whatever the policies are in your neck of the woods, will you go get a test?
I will go in if I get symptoms. If I go in for allergies, I expect they’ll test me.
Gotcha. Here’s hoping that does not come to pass.
Well crap HE. Hoping for the best for you and your family.
sorry
Sorry to hear about your dad’s passing away. Hope this is nothing but a week or two of working from home for you.
Two of my friends flew to Vegas and back with a third person that had the CCPV back in March. Neither caught it after spending a week with him.
That’s reassuring. I also have the O+ blood type going for me.
I’ll let you all know if any interesting anecdotes or facts come out of my adventures in GavinLand.
Ah, Washington–inhabited by people who are the polar opposite of its namesake.
Oh, that’s my Washington. Sorry, we suck.
Does this mean that it’s now illegal to borrow a cup of sugar from your neighbor?
Could very well be….for the neighbor.
wait…did you just change your avatar
Uh……………no.
Let me just say to the assholes out there that it is waaaay too hot for all this bullshit going on.
Just stop it.
https://youtu.be/T_x6QmuJdms
Heheheh–you haven’t heard the last of him!
Well, the crowd is far more spread out, but first audience for sumo since the January basho.
https://youtu.be/V-dmMYND9N8
Too bad tomorrow, or today, is a work day.
God help the rasslers if COVID gets into their ranks.
Already has, to an unknown degree. Several reported infections and at least one death.
Yeeesh…I hope they overcome it.
I don’t know who to root for.
Root for the Forgotten Resident who isn’t stirring shit and just wants to go work and live.
Fair point.
H/T to Vhyrus over on the Discord: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/334850908842229760/733205796355178557/China_May_be_Using_Sea_to_Hide_its_Submarines.jpg
Hopefully that link works.
I laugh about this at least 10 times a day. And yet, I had to explain the joke to the spousal unit……FML
If it doesn’t work, try https://imgur.com/a/KHeSZTS
Why hasn’t he come around the actual site?
Oh, this is just swell. I’ve already planned out my route from work if I decide to start going to Indiana for my groceries. I guess I’ll have to take along a cooler for the refrigerated & frozen stuff.
AAAAAAND there it is.
Yup. All about that sweet .gov monies.
If I buy a bag of ice, I’ve had no trouble getting cold stuff along a two hour route home in a cooler. I’ve not risked it without the ice.
Two hours, eh? That’s dedication. ::fist bump:: It’s barely over an hour from my office south of Dayton to the Meijer grocery on the north side of Richmond, IN, and that’s avoiding the interstate almost entirely. Then it’s less than 40 minutes home via I-70. One bag of ice on my way out, and my yogurt and frozen lunches should be fine.
Well, I didn’t (and don’t) trust Vermonsters. So I continued on to New Hampshire.
But that may be over as the madness spreads.
The state that brought us Bernie.
Checks out.
Just skip the ice cream. The frozen/cold stuff in plastic bags will not even begin to thaw out. We do it all the time, we are a long ways from the big box stores (close to an hour) and often stop for lunch after shopping. You can add crumpled newspaper to the top for a little more insulation.
Newspaper? That’s more expensive and less useful than the bag of ice.
We took frozen stuff to Canada, stay over night, fly in the next day to go fishing. Stuff would still be frozen (not hard) in the bottom of the coolers. Get it into a refrig and eat safely for a week. We always had steak the last night, after lots of walleyes during the week. The calendar finally ran out on us, got too long in the tooth, geezers need to admit the truth.
I’m looking at you, Mr Biden. We can’t fool Mother Gaia.
*muffled expletives*
I got past the action-centric climax of the story, but am now stuck on a conversation between Dug and Kord. A secondary theme has been the dynamic between this particular father and son pair, so it needs some advancement before the story closes, but I’m not getting the words on the page. (no matter how many times I draft the conversation in my head)
Is this in the short story you mentioned in a comment yesterday or one of your longer WIPs?
The short story.
Building up momentum and getting the boost from finishing something usually helps me get back into writing the longer works. Likely after this, I’ll go back to Prince of the North Tower, since I know the rest of the story there.
Excellent! Will you post the short story here? (Pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease?)
I have to finish it first.
…Aaaand… *checks word count* … it’s technically a Novella.
Just right to be serialized.
https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/husband-son-of-federal-judge-shot-at-their-new-jersey-home/2521283/
Random or a hired killer?
Totally Targetted Termination
More Bevelyn Beatty.
She needs more air time.
Missouri governor will pardon that St. Louis couple that confronted the protestors if they’re charged:
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/07/19/mo-governor-to-issue-pardon-if-armed-st-louis-couple-charged/
Well I’ll be damned, a governor with a reasonable outlook vis a vis guns.
*Snicker*
Lol. High five for that guy.
This is what Democrat’s want.
For great justice!!
Make your time.