I’d post a link to the Jonathan Coulton song about celebrating the first of May, but it’s NSFW.
Look, it’s already slim pickings for holidays between the 4th of July and Thanksgiving. Just let us have our weird holiday. You can still keep yours
I took that song as a confirmation of my feelings posted above, the rest of the world celebrates Workers’ day, the U.S. celebrates fucking outdoors, which would be an analogy of what companies do to their workers…
I guess it’s still not that obvious but the MAGA cult isn’t exactly rational or logically consistent. They can hold contradictory beliefs simultaneously.
As such, Labor Day is for the workers, but only when the workers are white, Christian men. Otherwise, it’s a day off work for lazy, shiftless furriners (ed note: they don’t see the irony in that description) that should appreciate what white, Christian men have given them
Yeah, the thing is, dumpster fires are real; phoenixes aren’t.
The country will eventually rebuild something over the ruins DJT leaves behind. But it will take generations, and there is no guarantee it will be anything good.
But… but doesn’t Outdoor Fucking begin that day?
ETA: Damnit @Gyrate!
Who’s planning on giving up ground beef for the foreseeable future?
Paul Krugman today:
Transcript of podcast
“Mary had a little lamb, but when she saw it sicken, she sent it off to Packingtown, and now it’s labeled chicken.”
Hi, Paul Krugman here. That’s a little ditty that was circulating, I can’t find any original source, around 1905, when Upton Sinclair published “The Jungle” — about the meatpacking industry, one of the sort of founding documents of the progressive movement.
The topic today is Donald Trump and beef, because here we are back in Upton Sinclair territory.
So you may have seen that last month Trump announced, given that we have high beef prices, that he was going to allow the tariff-free import of 300,000 tons of ground beef.
Rather oddly, he didn’t say from where and wouldn’t say from where for a while. And then eventually said, well, from Argentina, Brazil, and other places.
There has been a substantial uproar over these imports of ground beef because of concerns about safety. You know, if he won’t even say where it’s coming from or whether the countries involved are going to be practicing food safety, that is kind of an issue. And it turns out it’s not just, you know, not just woke liberal types but ranchers, lawmakers and food safety experts who were very concerned about the plan and were not reassured when Trump said the meat is “very clean and very good.”
…
Well, if Donnie says the meat is okay, then I’m sure it’s true!
…It turns out that the initial plan to allow the beef imports was announced the day after a closed door meeting between Trump and a Brazilian meat packing billionaire who is a major donor to Trump…
SURPRISE!!
…Normally, when we think about, or as we used to think about, left versus right, there is a question about the role of government. How big a role should government play?
…
But there are certain roles that government must play. The government needs to provide public goods. The government needs to provide things that the private sector cannot do for itself, which is obviously things like national defense, things like public safety, and it turns out also things like ensuring the safety of the food supply, just like ensuring the safety of the water supply.It turns out that regulation of what goes on in meatpacking plants, regulation of what goes into your food is something that you really want the government to do.
…
DUH.
If things go as they should, this move will really piss off the MAGA cattlemen and ranchers.
Well, for the PG-13-rated version, there’s always The Lusty Month of May from the musical Camelot.
Tra la, it’s May, the lusty month of May
That lovely month when everyone goes blissfully astray
Tra la, it’s here, that shocking time of year
When tons of wicked little thoughts merrily appear
It’s May, it’s May, that gorgeous holiday
When every maiden prays that her lad will be a cad
It’s mad, it’s gay, a libelous display
Those dreary vows that everyone takes
Everyone breaks
Everyone makes divine mistakes
The lusty month of May
It’s May, the lusty month of May
That darling month when everyone throws self-control away
It’s time to do a wretched thing or two
And try to make each precious day one you’ll always rue
It’s May, it’s May, the month of yes you may
The time for every frivolous whim, proper or im-
It’s wild, it’s gay, a blot in every way
The birds and bees with all of their vast amorous past
Gaze at the human race aghast
In Canada? You’ll catch your death!
Huh, I’ve not bought ground beef in months. It’s just not affordable. I buy chicken and once in a while pork. I haven’t bought, served, or eaten even a lowly pot roast. I just can’t afford it.
OK, I guess I’m ignorant what is all of this about fucking outdoors? I don’t think I’ve ever heard of that. Do y’all mean the first of May or the first Monday in September? 
They mean early May. It’s not a holiday in Canada but the weather can actually be nice instead of cold and people can apparently enjoy outdoor ‘recreation’ with some degree of comfort
If I might hijack this thread about the month of May to discuss Donald Trump, he’s now claiming he was at Ground Zero on 9/11 and firefighters had to pick him up and carry him out of the building before it collapsed.
It’s of paramount importance to Trump that every event be made about Trump.
Trump claims he was basically lifted out of the rubble on 9/11: “Two fireman, big strong guys, they grabbed me under the arms – ‘got to get our of here!’ – and they literally lifted me up, and they started running with me.”
…with tears in their eyes, saying “Sir, we’ve never carried such an amazing burden…”
Dementia. My dad did similar things as his long decline got worse. Memories of things that happened to other people, or sometimes TV shows, became things that he thought happened to him.
In Trump’s case, dementia conflated with ego and narcissism, but the pattern of memory conflation and confusion is still obvious to anyone who’s lived with a dementia patient.
All of that is clearly true.
Worth noting, though: all of Donald’s confabulations just happen to make him Special and Important and At the Center of Things. He never tells a story about being laughed at by members of New York’s elite (though that really happened). No, it’s always about how in awe of him NY’s Elite is, and has been forever.
It’s possible to have some sort of sympathy for a person whose brain-deterioration leads them to claim things that aren’t true. But it’s impossible to have anything but contempt for Donny-the-Focus-of-the-Universe.
Not sure where to share this, but I must share somewhere: NPR this morning had Jonah Goldberg, “founder of the conservative online site The Dispatch”. He described Trump’s weekend social media posting spree as
“he was posting on Truth Social like an escaped monkey from a cocaine study.”
Agreed.
The monkey will sue you now.