Why don’t you tell me what I want right this minute?
Q: Why does Euell Gibbons have purple stains on his shorts?
A. Because he has Grape Nuts. 
This is one of those moments where I want to have no idea what you’re talking about.
And … yet …
Nope. I’m drawing a blank on this one.
Apparently for everybody who is not a Trump supporter and especially those who are in any elected position to stand, shout, and denounce Trump as often and as loudly as possible.
At least, if I’m reading your posts correctly.
Because for decades, submission to the Republicans has been the top goal of the Democratic leadership. Ever since Reagan they seem to have bought into the idea that the Republicans are correct when they claim to represent “real Americans”, and keep trying to pander to those white racist men, and grovelling to gain the approval of the Republicans to a degree that is frankly reminiscent of an abused spouse trying to placate their abuser.
The only reason t he Republicans didn’t take over long ago is that no matter how much they tried, the Democrats were never able to surrender hard enough to satisfy them. Over and over and over the Democrats offered 100% surrender, and the Republicans would always turn around and demand even more rather than accept victory.
But now the Republicans have simply started ignoring the Democrats entirely and just doing as they please…and discovered that they can get away with anything, because the Democrats would literally rather die than stand up to them. At some point, likely soon the Republicans will just have the Democratic leadership rounded up and tossed in prison (or worse), probably without much of the way of even verbal resistance from the Democrats.
And they’ll go to their fate telling each other that it wouldn’t have happened if they’d just sucked up to the Republicans harder, and congratulating each other on how they have the moral high ground and are “the adults in the room”. While the rest of us suffer for it.
Send them to Greenland. Win - win.
Eric trump has given the leading German financial newspaper Handelsblatt (akin to the Financial Times here) an interview (in German, and probably paywalled):
The content is remarcable insofar as it shows his limited intellect (no surprise here) and his just as limited rhetorical skills (he tried to sound like his father, and succeeds in reaching his levels of incongruity, ignorance and self absorbtion). I won’t quote or translate, I just want to show the pictures of the office where the interview was held. It is in Florida, close to mar-a-lago.
What I found curious: the reporter, only one, seems to be very young, not senior at all. The shelf is full of trump booze: trump vodka (does that still exist?), trump wines, trump sparkling wines. And maga hats, mostly red, one black, and memorabilia with the numbers 45 and 47. And old family pics. His computer has a big screen with what seems to be his weekly schedule, which I think he should not show. Seems like he does not like to start work (or whatever he does) early. And two lamps for the lightning of his social media appearances (too stupid the windows are behind him, I bet he looks dark against the florida sky) and a big microphone, the cable all over his desk. Keeping the family tradition he does not seem to use the desk for writing or reading. No ball pens, no sharpies even, no pencils, no books, except in the top right corner of the first picture: eric trump under siege. It seems he has given the interviewer a copy, perhaps he signed it. It is by the side of his laptop in the second picture. A deflated rugby ball with the family name in golden letters.
That SOB was supposed to film a Grape Nuts commercial on our family boat on the lake but flaked out at the last second.
I blame Biden.
There’s a red coffee mug full of pens and pencils at the lower left of his monitor, and some post-it notes mostly hidden nearby.
May it prove to be an omen. (Thanks for that rather horrifying glimpse into Eric…)
We haven’t yet mentioned another group with the power—perhaps more power than Congress—to remove or at least neuter this destructive regime: the giant corporations and their leaders. And of course what @Dr.Drake described with respect to his Congresswoman is operating for the big men of the American economy: they are cashing in right now.
The fact that we may well be headed to the '99% of the populations subsists on bark and grass’ North Korean reality does not enter into their calculations------proving their immense indifference to the welfare of their own children, if nothing else. With 99% of Americans living in desperate poverty, American business is not going to be thriving, is it??? People who can’t afford a crust of bread will not be customers for your wonderful AI innovations, will they???
But they can’t see this.
All they can see is the money they are raking in right now. They can’t conceive of a tomorrow in which the consequences of wrecking an economy manifest in, you know, a wrecked economy.
Right you are! I did not see it.
Did I mention the sort sleeved shirt under his badly fitting, badly crumpled suit?
Probably sounded better in the original German.
During yesterday’s press conference, Karoline Leavitt looked at a clock and abruptly ended the event 30 seconds before reaching the 65-minute mark - thereby causing anyone who wagered on that in a prediction market to make 50 times their wager.
Hence the lights. Think of the photographs of people posing in front of a beautiful sunset. The photographer uses a flash so that the subject isn’t dark.
I assume this is happening all the time with prediction markets. Insider trading was hard enough to catch when it was limited to Wall Street. I have no idea how you police “I’m going to use the words ____ and ____ unexpectedly in my speech today so make sure you put bets on both of them.”
A federal ban on “prediction markets” would be a good start, IMO.
No way to provide a link now, but The Atlantic had a piece this week about this phenomenon, and the insider trading aspect, with many examples.
Part of the piece was arguing that the ability to monitor odds/action on Polymarket is effectively making “insider information” available to anyone, in a way the stock market is not.
Absolutely. He was actually one of my heroes when I was in high school. The following is a true conversation between my father and me when the news of Gibbons’ death on December 29, 1975 broke.
Dad: You like Euell Gibbons, right?
Monty: That’s right. Why?
Dad: He just died.
Monty: No! How.
Dad: He died from natural causes.
Monty: Dad, that’s not a funny joke.
Dad: What? It’s true. You can check the news.
Then I explained to my father what else Gibbons was known for outside of the cereal commercial. And, yes, I had already heard that many parts of a pine tree are edible before he announced it far and wide.
My condolences. What a phenomenal disappointment he’s become!
Reminds me of roasted hickory nuts!
He is absolutely the worst.
Over forty years ago, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled undocumented immigrant children have a right to education in the United States. Why do I mention this? Oh, maybe because of this brawl involving Border Patrol agents, teachers, students, other school staff, and neighbors in Minneapolis.
Unless the person fleeing in a vehicle was driving it through the schools à la The Blues Brothers, there was no reason to send a horde of agents onto the property. And it was obviously not that dangerous a situation when the senior agent on the scene is calmly walking to an entrance of the school and being recorded by one of his staff for the reality show everyone in the current administration thinks they’re all starring in.
We don’t need no stinking investigations!
And let’s discuss that agent for just a moment. When someone is relying on their training, I believe it’s safe to assert they are also relying on their experience. What kind of experience did this agent have?
What do you mean I can’t play general when, where, and how I want?
The most telling part of this story is this comment. (The bolding is mine.)
Seriously, WTF is that thing? This semester I taught my students how to make an infographic. Evidently someone from DHS should’ve attended one or two of my classes. This thing makes no sense. It has no flow, no real message, no organization, no logic, and plenty of weave clusterfuck.
Oh, I get it now.