A Tampa man, Andrew Lumish, spends his one day off a week doing something unusual: he cleans the dirty and neglected graves of veterans at cemeteries in the Tampa area.
TAMPA – The story of Andrew Lumish’s selfless and up until now anonymous service to veterans struck a chord. More than 8 million people around the world have viewed the story on Facebook and on abcactionnews.com in just two days.
“I’ve gotten phone calls and messages from people I haven’t seen since kindergarten. I’ve been on three radio shows across the country already this morning” said Lumish reeling from the reaction.
Among the more than 10,000 comments on Facebook, Lumish is called a blessing, an inspiration, even a hero for his work cleaning old and often forgotten grave stones of veterans and their families at Cemeteries around the Tampa Bay Area.
Just a nice, positive story for the end of a busy and somewhat nerve wracking week.
TenguPhule
A dirty thankless job. But someone had to do it.
lollipopguild
An actual real way to honor vets.
Adam L Silverman
@TenguPhule: Yes. @lollipopguild: And yes.
rikyrah
uh huh
So, after giving millionaires and billionaires tax cuts, they’ll need to come for Social Security to ‘ make things right’.
Uh huh
Wall Street JournalVerified account @WSJ
Opinion: Increasing Social Security eligibility age can offset revenue loss from tax cuts, writes Martin Feldstein
Timurid
@rikyrah:
The solution to automation and a growing labor surplus? Force people to stay in the workforce longer!
NEWCASTLE NEEDS MORE COAL GODDAMNIT!
TenguPhule
@rikyrah: 2005, this time as farce.
efgoldman
Damn. I saw the headline and immediately thought “what’s he stealing.” Especially in Florida.
This fucking country full of assholes has made us too cynical.
Adam L Silverman
@Timurid: There is a huge problem coming fast with automation and what it is going to do to the labor force and the economy. We are in the 21st Century with an economic policy that is functionally structured around the mid 20th Century. We are in for a world of hurt and I don’t expect any of our elected and/or appointed officials to be of any help.
chopper
@lollipopguild:
wait, you mean saying “thank you for your service” isn’t enough?
efgoldman
@Adam L Silverman:
Yup. The next big thing is trucking. You don’t think the self-driving cars are all about letting you read your favorite website during the morning commute, do you?
amk
@rikyrah: Guess ‘their party’ didn’t listen to their keep the ebil gobinment’s hands off my SS poutraging rants.
skerry
@rikyrah: We already did this under Reagan. It’s already 67 for people born 1960+.
Adam L Silverman
@efgoldman: Gotcha!
Mnemosyne
I’m tired and cranky and my asthma is acting up, but a bowl of matzoh ball soup helped. Even though the “matzoh balls” were really heavy, like eating chunks of polenta.
Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)
Fuck MSNBC
Mnemosyne
@skerry:
That’s my retirement age — 67. How, exactly, am I supposed to plan for a further-out age when I’m 2 years away from 50 already?
efgoldman
@Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD):
I don’t know why anybody with two brain cells to rub together – including some people here – ever watches that excrescence.
TS
I love visiting graveyards/cemeteries. They are such peaceful places and so full of history. Some are well looked after, some not. I can understand the pleasure it gives Mr Lumish to be there and to spend his time looking after the graves.
I enjoy sitting and talking to the folks that are long gone – they always agree with my point of view and never answer back. Where I live, the early immigrants reserved the best part of Town to celebrate their ancestors. Many cemeteries are on the coast with magnificent views of the ocean. Just a small part of our heritage, that so far (touch wood) the developers have not been able to take away.
Adam L Silverman
@efgoldman: No, no I do not.
Mnemosyne
@Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD):
Hugh Hewitt is still alive?
And there’s no better way to get young people to watch your news channel than hiring elderly Nixon staffers.
Adam L Silverman
@Mnemosyne: Some rise, some sink, some rise, some sink.
Also, we all float down here.
Omnes Omnibus
@TenguPhule:
No, that’s part of the point. No one had to do it. He chose to do it.
Timurid
@Adam L Silverman:
It’s insane how many people’s solutions to Big Problems involve entering the workforce earlier and leaving it later.
“College costs too much? Working full time and going to school full time builds character!” “We can’t afford all these entitlements! Raise the eligibility age for Social Security and Medicare!”
When the real crisis hits, they’re going to be trying to put out a wildfire with tanker trucks full of gasoline…
Adam L Silverman
@Mnemosyne: Who is dumb as a bag of hair.
Sab
Rachel Meadow has a Russian anti-Putin guy on who has been poisoned to the point of coma twice, and he’s still out there protesting. Brave! Vladimir Kara-Murray. Reminds me of Dr King and his people.Brave!
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD): Happy I cut the cord on them.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Adam L Silverman: Yes, but it’s mighty fine hair.
Major Major Major Major
@Adam L Silverman: you know, we should do an intro to programming book book club here. Talking to computers is a very valuable skill for anybody.
Adam L Silverman
@Timurid: And that doesn’t even count people that have done everything right and still managed to fall between the cracks or get hosed. Eventually something will have to give. And we can either plan for that day in order to manage the transition and mitigate the disruption or things can get really, really ugly. Care to guess which is more likely to happen?
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne: My understanding is that simple chicken soup is what you want/need. You may have over-accessorized your soup.
amk
beeb’s piece on future of the world.
Too alarmist? Or foresight?
Adam L Silverman
@Major Major Major Major: Get with me offline at your convenience (no rush to do it tonight) and we’ll see what we can come up with.
Timurid
@Adam L Silverman:
And there’s a greater likelihood of Americans accepting sharia law than any of the obvious solutions (universal basic income, guaranteed employment, free higher/vocational education, etc.)…
Mike in NC
@Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD): Andrew Lack is the piece of shit who had Matt Lauer grill Hillary Clinton about emails, right?
efgoldman
@Major Major Major Major:
I talk to my computer every night.
Oh, wait. You’re actually a person?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Omnes Omnibus:
It’s California, deal.
Adam L Silverman
@amk: In between.
efgoldman
@Omnes Omnibus:
That’s like saying you over-accessorized your wardrobe when you wear shoes to leave the house.
Adam L Silverman
@Timurid: Most likely.
trollhattan
Silverman bait:
Aww, the alpha male might not be in charge. Bannon coalition unraveling? This is good news for
John McCainthe planet.Mike in NC
We have friends who live in Land O Lakes, Florida. Yes, it’s a real place.
Mnemosyne
@Omnes Omnibus:
My neighbors when I was a kid told me that matzoh ball soup cures everything. You’re not telling me that Mrs. Bloomgarden and Mrs. Hammerman lied to me, are you?
Though if I wanted good matzoh ball soup, I should have gone to a deli and not a hipster cafe. Oh well.
Major Major Major Major
@efgoldman: I hate shoes.
@Adam L Silverman: cursorily emailed.
Mary G
@amk: Yeah, I think automation is going to be a huge deal, a game-changer on the order of the industrial revolution. The thing that Republicans will never, ever say out loud is that they think the world just doesn’t need as many people and getting the poor to die off as fast as possible, because they just aren’t going to need that much labor, is a feature, not a bug.
efgoldman
@trollhattan:
Having an open Nazi who also falsified his “academic credentials” and can’t get a security clearance is a bad look even for these bozos.
Mnemosyne
@amk:
Well, that can’t be true, because Ayn Rand told me that the elites can vanish and take care of themselves. I’m sure David Koch knows how to scrub his own toilet and make meals from scratch.
schrodingers_cat
@Mike in NC: I thought Minnesota was the Land O Lakes.
A Ghost to Most
@TS:
As a child, my mother was obsessed with our family tree (much harder precomputer), and her idea of a great vacation was visiting cemetery after cemetery. Hard for four rambunctious, bored kids to stay out of trouble.
It takes a lot to get me in one today.
Mike in NC
@trollhattan: This Gorka scumbag would be the ideal director of the House of Terror museum in Budapest, which deals with various fascist movements. We didn’t have the opportunity to visit it while there, but no doubt they will some day add a Trump exhibit.
Major Major Major Major
@Mnemosyne: if he doesn’t, I’m sure he can hire one of Peter Thiel’s blonde rentboys with some Bitcoins.
J R in WV
@efgoldman:
What commute? Who’s going to be going to work? Silly old boy!!!
schrodingers_cat
@trollhattan: What is this stupid fascination with the Greek alphabet?
jacy
@Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD):
In what backwards, Upsidedown, Bizarro world would that ever make sense? I’m pretty sure that viewership would not overlap.
lollipopguild
@amk: There were all of those books and movies in the 60’s and 70’s about overpopulation and people starving to death, “Soylent Green is people” that never happened. there was a book in the 90’s about the “Coming war with Japan” that never happened. You can also look at countries around the planet that are coming apart and wonder how quickly that might happen here. With tRump and friends in charge and conservatives who are insane and being fed a daily dose of insanity by the right wing media I have to say that our country coming apart like a novel or a movie looks a lot more likely than before Nov. 2016. Things can also get better. On June 1 1940 most people would have bet that the English were going to go down under the Nazi bootheel just like the French. It did not happen and you can make a strong case that Hitler started losing the war in the summer of 1940. Good stuff can happen too.
efgoldman
@Mnemosyne:
I’m pretty sure I saw an auto-cleaning toilet somewhere.
efgoldman
@A Ghost to Most:
There’s one way for sure
Elie
@trollhattan:
We’ll see… Bannon has gone to ground recently and we don’t know for sure if his influence is completely gone or just underground and more sneaky. That is actually more dangerous. I am hoping that this is real — that he is not as smart as he thought. That said, Breitbart has not flipped on Trump as you might expect if Bannon was really subtracted — so I am suspicious that this is not fully what it seems. And I consider Bannon’s ideology to be very dangerous and subversive. Sorry, but I am not fully buying in to the “word” that he is outa there. I think Bannon has the capacity for patience and a long game.
Adam L Silverman
@trollhattan: I’ve already seen it. The problem they’re going to have is two fold: 1) Because he can’t put in for a clearance, let alone get one, there are no positions in DOD, the Intel Community, DOJ/FBI, and/or DHS that he could get. Every single one would require a TS/SCI. 2) Apparently the White House folks are trying to find a landing pad, intimated as finding him an SES position somewhere, because the President likes him because the President likes the aggressive way he defends the Administration on cable news. And here’s where the problem comes in: he doesn’t have the credentials to be an SES. It requires a certain amount of time in the next highest grade – GS 15, plus it requires an entire set of certifications that result from attending very specific courses. Gorka has none of those.
There is also an additional potential problem for him. The DOJ attorney arguing an immigration case in front of the Supreme Court this past week has asserted that the Administration’s/the government’s position is that any lie, omission, or factual inaccuracy on one’s immigration and naturalization paperwork makes the grant of citizenship invalid and should lead to citizenship being stripped from naturalized Americans. While a cross section of the Supremes (Roberts, Kennedy, Sotomayor, Breyer, and Kagan) didn’t seem to be buying it, if the government wins this case, based on the Trump Administration’s own legal standards for naturalization, Gorka’s citizenship is forfeit.
Couldn’t happen to a nicer neo-NAZI.
Omnes Omnibus
@efgoldman: Are you saying that chicken soup requires matzoh?
debbie
@Mnemosyne:
Whoever made the matzoh balls overstirred the mix.
Major Major Major Major
@efgoldman: Japan? Japanese restaurant? Germany?
Mnemosyne
@jacy:
In the world where you’re trying to tank Joy’s ratings so you have an excuse to fire her.
opiejeanne
@efgoldman: Lawrence O’Donnell and Rachel Maddow.
efgoldman
@Omnes Omnibus:
Matzoh balls ain’t matzoh. no more than cookies are flour
Omnes Omnibus
@schrodingers_cat: Are you really serious?
Adam L Silverman
@A Ghost to Most: Hearse? Urn? Casket? 3 to 1 herringbone weave shroud? Ossuary? Any of those work?
A Ghost to Most
@efgoldman:
Not at all: burn me and scatter my ashes in the San Juan mountains of Colorado
Jeffro
@Adam L Silverman:
It’s not just a coming problem, it’s here. It’s been here for 20+ years.
Just as we (society) should have had a conversation back in the 80s and 90s about how if we’re gonna open up to globalization, we need to skim the profits and use it to help folks retrain…we’re about to not have a conversation that’s sorely needed about how if we’re going to pursue automation to the Nth degree, we need to guarantee a minimum wage/housing/health care for all citizens.
Maybe start with someone smart, with a big-picture perspective, reminding the world’s fortunate class that they can automate shit all they want and eliminate those pesky labor costs…but those pesky laborers are still there. And as life gets easier here on ol’ planet Earth, maybe the gazillionaires of the world could spring for basic income/benefits?
efgoldman
@opiejeanne:
Anybody that has Uncle Pat Goebbels on as a regular doesn’t get my eyeballs, no matter how smart she is.
jacy
@Mnemosyne:
I am so glad I cut the cord in November. It’s weird not having a TV, but I’m sure it’s better for my blood pressure.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Adam L Silverman:
As the First Lady’s as well.
Mnemosyne
@lollipopguild:
Aha, you’ve given me an opportunity to hop up on one of my soapboxes! Those who’ve already seen this soapbox can feel free to scroll on by.
The thing about the whole “overpopulation” genre is that the (mostly) male writers who came up with it had no clue that when women were offered an inexpensive, widely available, and highly effective form of contraception with the Pill, women would jump on that immediately and refuse to let go.
Turns out that the vast majority of women don’t want more than two kids. Some only want one. Some want none. But because such a simple form of contraception didn’t exist, science fiction writers couldn’t picture women not only having fewer children, but wanting fewer.
That whole genre ran aground on the shoals of the Pill, and women never looked back.
lollipopguild
@efgoldman: “Pitchfork Pat”? He is just a harmless little fuzzball-just like rush and rupert.
rikyrah
Conservatives Angry That Biased Media Accurately Reports Who Gets Trump Tax Cuts
By Jonathan Chait
During his presidential campaign, Donald Trump promised that he would ultimately support a plan that would raise taxes on high-income earners,including himself. “It’s going to cost me a fortune, which is actually true,” he said at one point, going out of his way to emphasize that this promise was one of his rare, non-false claims (“which is actually true”). His Treasury secretary later promised
that the Trump tax plan would not provide high-income earners with net tax reduction. So when Trump unveiled his tax plan this week, the most important revelation was that Trump’s promise was not actually true. His plan describes a massive tax cut for the rich.
………………………………….
Cutting taxes on affluent people has been the Republican Party’s number-one policy objective for more than a quarter century. Republicans are not merely interested in cutting taxes on the whole, they take special exception to the most progressive ones — which is why they ignore regressive taxes, like the payroll tax, while proposing the deepest cuts for taxation of capital income. They have hewed relentlessly to this goal during recessions and booms, in the minority and in the majority, and they believe in this policy for a combination of moral and economic reasons.
However, since this policy is highly unpopular with the public, Republicans have grown habituated to obscuring this intent. Their messaging is built around lying about, or obscuring, the distributional impact of their tax, policies. In the past, they have had a lot of success bullying the mainstream news media into treating the distributional impact of their policies as a contested question of partisan spin, rather than something that can be measured in fairly straightforward fashion.
So, now that Republicans have rolled out another massively regressive tax cut, they’re going to spend a lot of time insisting that the news media should not report this fact.
debbie
@Mike in NC:
You might enjoy this tweet about Seb’s education:
https://twitter.com/bjimd/status/858099649395163136
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Jeffro:
…and not an insignificant portion are armed.
opiejeanne
@TS: They have been able to take away lots of cemeteries; some have been paved over for parking lots despite protests from local historians, many have been dug up and moved because a developer needed the land. I’m talking about really old cemeteries on the East Coast. Genealogists can tell you all about the loss of these places.
The state of Missouri does at least one thing correctly. Those family cemeteries on farms with big fences to keep the cows in, if you need to get in to visit the graves the sheriff will come out and escort you onto the property if the owner tries to keep you out. Access is guaranteed but it’s polite to ask first if you can find someone to ask.
lollipopguild
@Mnemosyne: Remember “Logan’s Run”? Ah good times. You are correct.
efgoldman
@Adam L Silverman:
We talked about this last night, though. Multiple appeals courts have found against the government’s position; only one has found in favor. And as you’ve said, the majority, including Roberts, seem highly skeptical.
opiejeanne
@Mnemosyne: I didn’t realize he was elderly. I thought the white hair was an affectation. Or that he’s an albino.
rikyrah
Stephen Wolf
✔
@PoliticsWolf
NC GOP passed a reverse court-packing law that eliminates the seats of retiring GOP judges so the Dem governor can’t replace them with Dems pic.twitter.com/f9HhsLZCdg
Follow
Stephen Wolf
✔
@PoliticsWolf
This GOP power grab is so blatantly undemocratic that 1 of the retiring REPUBLICAN judges resigned a month early so a Dem could replace him https://twitter.com/PoliticsWolf/status/858053136119943169 …
3:21 PM – 28 Apr 2017
Mnemosyne
@lollipopguild:
We actually watched “Logan’s Run” on TCM a few years ago. That is one trippy 70s movie, and I’m astounded that anyone thought Michael York could pass for 30.
efgoldman
@debbie:
My paternal grandmother made hers from scratch. From year to year they might be huge and fluffy, or little tiny cannonballs.
Louise B.
Our own David Anderson/Richard Mayhew got a shout-out at The Incidental Economist – a good healthcare economics blog.
Adam L Silverman
@Jeffro: No argument here, but it is going to accelerate very quickly and it is going to move into the white collar, skilled positions that it has not effected so far.
Mnemosyne
@opiejeanne:
The main reason I remember who Hugh Hewitt is is that he used to be the head curator at the Nixon Library and they had an infamous display that explained that Watergate was a fake scandal made up by the media.
I’m sure there are pictures online somewhere. When the National Archives took over, they dismantled that shit.
Adam L Silverman
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Yep. But based on the questioning by the Justices I don’t think the government is going to win this case.
efgoldman
@Mnemosyne:
No commercial TV network is going to do that. They get paid on numbers of eyeballs.
Major Major Major Major
@lollipopguild: ??protein from the sea??
weaselone
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Not a problem. The robotic legions will make quick work of all those unwilling to starve peacefully out of site.
Mnemosyne
@efgoldman:
Don’t be naive, Kay.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@opiejeanne: They’ve been finding bones at the old cemetary on Fort Moore hill in downtown LA for the last 80 years. I guess they found the most when they dug out the route for the Hollywood freeway though downtown(aka ‘the slot’).
efgoldman
@lollipopguild:
No Nazi with a [relatively] big platform is “harmless”.
Iron City
@Adam L Silverman: You do not need a TS/SCI clearance for a lot of federal jobs and you do not need to be a GS-15 or equal to get an SES. The smart people stayed 15s or equal (that 15 is only the General Schedule, there are other pay plans at different agencies that implemented pay banding and other ways of describing levels of work) because the SES compensation has a big bonus component to it that can and is easily manipulated by management, but that had to happen because the regular compensation is up against a ceiling tied to salaries of political appointees and Congress.
Mnemosyne
@Major Major Major Major:
Same thing. Harry Harrison could not picture a world where women would voluntarily have fewer children. Hell, clamor for the opportunity!
lollipopguild
@Mnemosyne: Just look at “Grease” with all of the actors playing high school students. LOL!
?BillinGlendaleCA
@opiejeanne:
I think the term of art is “ambulatory cheesecake sculpture”.
amk
@Adam L Silverman:
It’s already here, my friend.
Kropadope
@rikyrah: Makes sense. Bullying the MSM into treating their insanity as plausible is the greatest weapon Republicans have.
trollhattan
@Adam L Silverman:
And wouldn’t that be a shame? (Das ist schade.)
lollipopguild
@Major Major Major Major: Be like Euell Gibbons and eat tree bark or vinyl siding.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Mnemosyne: The Libraries can be pretty bad while the President is still alive. I hope that since both of the Reagans are rotting in hell, the Reagan library will more historically accurate.
Major Major Major Major
@Mnemosyne: I was just quoting the robot from Logan’s Run.
rikyrah
Sahil Kapur
✔
@sahilkapur
FRED UPTON, the GOP’s point man for dozens of Obamacare repeal votes, says he’s “not comfortable” with the AHCA. https://bloom.bg/2pu4LGq
Follow
Sahil Kapur
✔
@sahilkapur
Losing Fred Upton on an Obamacare repeal bill would be like losing Paul Ryan on a tax-cut bill. https://twitter.com/sahilkapur/status/858054643204706306 …
3:27 PM – 28 Apr 2017
debbie
@efgoldman:
All I do is follow the instructions on the box and they’re perfect. I just keep forgetting how much they expand while cooking.
Adam L Silverman
@debbie: There is a larger issue here. This is the third one of these people I know of with bogus credentials who have wormed their way into a contact with the US military and then because of that, which essentially laundered their credentials clean, continued to do so. I got one fired – took two years. The second, despite having an iron clad case, I and my colleagues couldn’t get rid of him and, ultimately, the SES who is protecting him (because he hired him outside of the central vetting the rest of us had to go through and the SES is therefore covering his own ass) had to create a Title 5 (general schedule) position for him undo an Office of Personnel Management (OPM) code that requires no credentials for the actual position. He too has a dubious immigration history and we also turned him in as a counterintelligence risk.
Back to Gorka: The Marshall Center has come out and indicated he really didn’t do anything there and was never an actual instructor there. He did have a Title 10 (Excepted Service – Academic/AD, most likely at the O3/assistant professor rank at National Defense University’s College of International Security Affairs (NDU CISA). From there he had an externally funded, named professorship at Marine Corps University. It has now been reported that one of his wife’s cousins is the external funder and this was not disclosed to the MCU Foundation, which was handling the funding for the position. MCU has also distanced itself from him. So he’s managed to worm his way into three different Professional Military Education (PME) affiliations/positions with dubious credentials.
khead
@Adam L Silverman:
The article separated it into two issues: economic and ecological. Both matter, but many of the economic issues could actually be somewhat fixed with some political will and action (yeah, yeah I know – good luck).
The ecological? Not so much. You can’t pass a law to lift the local water table or lower the tidal push in Miami and Manhattan. Pretty sure the ecological factors will cause much more global instability.
sharl
All this dragging of NatSec studmuffin DOCTOR Sebastian Gorka is quite distressing. Only just today I discovered the existence of the twitter hashtag #GorkaCharts – it’s the best way to tour his dissertation without actually trying to read the thing.
Please don’t take this away from me. ?
clay
Hey all, I don’t know if y’all are aware, but W. Kamau Bell’s show returns to CNN this weekend.
I know CNN is shit-on-a-cracker, but Bell’s show is truly excellent. Check it out.
Adam L Silverman
@efgoldman: Sorry, been a busy week and I was basically only around to clear people out of moderation after I did my Monday evening post. Had a tasker to finish by Tuesday, then on Wednesday afternoon I agreed to handle a short suspense tasker to help my boss out. It was due this afternoon. Then I spent several hours this afternoon/evening fighting the never ending war against dog hair. Including steam mopping the entire house. And the big toe on my right foot… ?
debbie
@Adam L Silverman:
I did enjoy the crack about correspondence school.
Adam L Silverman
@Mnemosyne: Young Jenny Agutter for the win!
?BillinGlendaleCA
@khead:
True, but Trump will issue an Executive Order. Problem solved.
Mary G
@opiejeanne: I no longer consider 61 elderly, which my age and Hugh Hewitt’s. He’s about two months younger than I am. He’s one of those people who goes gray in the hair very early. He was on the LA PBS station years ago and was rapidly going gray then.
Adam L Silverman
@Iron City: My understanding from reading the OPM handbook I have here on my desktop is that you have to have specific certifications to qualify as an SES. And every SES announcement I’ve ever seen on USAJOBS has always required time in lower grade. Of course I’m only ever looking at the DOD ones, so it is possible that other agencies have different requirements.
That said: I know there are a lot of government jobs that don’t require TS/SCI clearances. There are NO, NADA, ZIPPO, BUPKIS government jobs dealing with terrorism, counterterrorism, asymmetric, irregular, and/or unconventional warfare – outside of some of the faculty positions at the Professional Military Education schoolhouses (which he won’t qualify for now that it is out in the open that his academic credentials are bogus), which is what Gorka claims are his areas of expertise that do not require a TS/SCI. I know this because I am someone with significant, specific expertise in terrorism, counterterrorism, asymmetric, irregular, and unconventional warfare.
So it is certainly possible that they could place Gorka at the Food and Drug Administration or NOAA or the FCC pushing paper. But not only would that be silly (though it would be somewhat of an appropriate punishment), it is also not something Gorka is going to be willing to take.
Omnes Omnibus
@efgoldman No Nazi is ever harmless.
J R in WV
@Mnemosyne:
Mrs J had a tubal ligation at about age 27 or 28 to be able to stop taking hormones, which upset her somewhat. Didn’t want any kids, which was OK with me. So we did our part to reduce population growth!
opiejeanne
@efgoldman: I have never seen him on her show; I thought she kicked him to the curb a while back but I don’t like her as much as my husband does. I do like O’Donnell a lot.
lollipopguild
@Adam L Silverman: She was also very good in “Walkabout”.
seaboogie
@Adam L Silverman: and I thought John meant you, for the yeoman’s work you do for this joint!
Adam L Silverman
@amk: Yes, but it is not fully here in the US yet. No one in the US in a policy position cares about white collar workers in Japan. That would just be crazy!
amk
@khead: twitler has issued yet another dicktat (sic) to drill arctic just to solve that danged water table problem.
amk
@?BillinGlendaleCA: twitler is on it already.
Adam L Silverman
@khead:
Actually you can, but the water table and the tidal push will just ignore it. Even if they send the US Marshals to enforce it.
Adam L Silverman
@sharl: I read the whole thing.
Mike in NC
@Mary G: My dad’s hair turned gray while he was in his late 20s, but it might have had something to do with all the Japanese in the Philippines shooting at him.
opiejeanne
@jacy: We are choosy about what we watch: lots of baseball, sitcoms, The Expanse. Most of the time we record Rachel and O’Donnell and my husband watches her when I’m doing something else.
OTOH, Twitter has been fairly poisonous recently. I’m only visiting social sites to post a photo or a funny video and leaving, hit and run. This is my happy place, Balloon Juice.
amk
OT… or not.
Adam L Silverman
@debbie: Yep, this appears to be an issue. And it is going to be a huge one. The Marshall Center issued a statement several months ago distancing itself from Gorka. In that statement they indicated he was not an instructor there and did not have a permanent, residential position. So if he wasn’t actually in Garmisch at the Marshall Center and he wasn’t back in Hungary at Corvinus University, where exactly was he for those three or four years. And what exactly was he actually doing?
Adam L Silverman
@lollipopguild: Never seen it. Am a fan of American Werewolf in London.
lollipopguild
@amk: Perfect!
Adam L Silverman
@seaboogie: Huh? I am confused.
sharl
@Adam L Silverman: O…M…G. What other horrible tasks does your job entail?
efgoldman
@lollipopguild:
Nomnomnom
opiejeanne
@Mnemosyne: Aldous Huxley did, but he may be the only major exception. I seem to remember the women doing the Malthusian exercise (It’s been 50 years since I read it so I’m not sure that’s what he called it).
The main character of Brave New World was unusual in that his mother gave birth to him rather than having him decanted and raised in a creche because she was some sort of hippie and lived on a preserve for such people.
Steve in the ATL
@Mnemosyne:
The important thing is that you still have great legs
efgoldman
@debbie:
For a Recovering Catholic Episcopalian, mrs efg does a really good job
ETA: Don’t you find some of the mixes very salty?
Librarian
@efgoldman: She hasn’t had Pat on her show in several years.
Jake the antisoshul soshulist
@efgoldman:
Cremation. “It’s better to burn out than to fade away.”
Or as Curly Fine would have it,”Hot stake is better than cold chop”.
amk
another OT … or trolling.
Adam L Silverman
@sharl: If I tell you I have to shoot someone…//
danielx
@amk:
I’m starting to see that business about how only the clinically depressed have a realistic view of the world….
efgoldman
@sharl:
David Nexon over at LG&M did a major multi-part fsking of his “dissertation.” It was tl:dr for me, but the one clear impression I got is I would have failed high school AP English if I had written like that.
Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)
@lollipopguild: McQueen in The Blob. Nuff said.
lollipopguild
@efgoldman: My wife very early in her working career had a boss who was Catholic on all of the Christian holidays and Jewish on all of the Jewish holidays. A very good Jewish-Catholic.
danielx
@opiejeanne:
Uh…have you considered therapy?
efgoldman
@Adam L Silverman:
You need to get your priorities in order. Nothing is more important than taking care of ravening hordes of Balloon Juice jackals!
You’ve been taking housecleaning lessons from Cole!
danielx
@lollipopguild:
I once dated a Jewish Wiccan who referred to herself as Jewitch first class.
amk
@danielx: If you are a liberal, you are clinically depressed for the bj rotating tag.
Shalimar
@Adam L Silverman: Mack Reynolds was writing science fiction about the coming huge automation/labor problem as far back as the early 1960s.
lollipopguild
@Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD): Yep, he was supposed to be a high school kid. Also “Kelly’s Heroes” most american soldiers in Europe were in their late teens or early 20’s, most of the actors in that film were late 30’s to 40’s.
efgoldman
@Adam L Silverman:
Maybe he’d be willing to teach Central European languages to his fellow inmates.
jacy
@J R in WV:
My daughter is 25 and a k-3 teacher. She is quite certain she does not want to have children, but when she tells people this, they are aghast. They always ask her why. She tells them, “I already have more kids than I need.” She is auntie to her best friend’s 2 (they live together in what’s basically a non-lesbian gay marriage), and she’s quite happy with it.
Major Major Major Major
@efgoldman: when I was a freshman in high school, the teacher failed her entire AP English class, even the ones who got the max (5?) on the official test. She was fired.
Adam L Silverman
@efgoldman: Yep.
rikyrah
Authentic ‘Southside with You’ Premieres on Netflix
April 28th 2017
“Southside With You” tells the legendary love story between Michelle and Barack Obama before we came to know them as our President and First Lady and, frankly, I cannot handle not knowing even more of it, having now seen the film. I want the wedding and everything leading up to it – their first real fight and the make-up session, the birth of their first child, and then their second, etc. “Southside With You” is a tale of a love that shows how some folks are just meant to be. If The Obamas actual relationship dynamic has anywhere near the amount of chemistry that was sparking off the screen in this satisfying romance drama, there is no question about why, together, they have been able to literally take over the world.
Writer and director Richard Tanne has created a film with an undeniably saccharine, feel-good vibe, which manages to depict the cute courtship, starting with a trip to the museum in which they bond over their mutual love for poet Gwendolyn Brooks, and have a deep conversation about the artwork of Ernie Barnes. The date draws to a close at Baskin Robbins after an intense and awkward scene involving the pair running into their co-workers at a screening of Spike Lee’s “Do The Right Thing.” This all amounts to authenticity–a necessary component for a biopic, which “Southside With You” is, in part. As President and First Lady, Barack Obama and Michelle Obama (nee Robinson) were commanding real-life presences and many important film elements converge to a render a pitch perfect recapitulation of the late 1980s through a Black American lens. Most noteworthy, the subtle, yet demonstrably fastidious attention given to the sonic and set design elements necessary to ensconce the viewer in a Chicago summer, in 1989.
Librarian
@Shalimar: There’s also a Twilight Zone episode about it.
efgoldman
@Adam L Silverman:
Hasn’t Governor Valdemort done something like that?
Adam L Silverman
@danielx: Or drugs?
Adam L Silverman
@efgoldman: I kept digging you all out of moderation even if I didn’t have time to post or comment much.
As for the steam mop: decisions were made, actions were taken. No one was spared.
efgoldman
@Adam L Silverman:
Probably something like smuggling cigarettes – or women.
Adam L Silverman
@Shalimar: I got that it was and is being covered in sci-fi. It is not being covered by policy makers that could actually do something about it. I appreciate the work of the former. We all live or die based on the work of the latter.
Mnemosyne
@Major Major Major Major:
D’oh! I got my dystopian overpopulation fiction mixed up — Harrison wrote Make Room, Make Room! which got turned into Soylent Green.
jacy
@opiejeanne:
I’m thinking of eventually subscribing to Playstation Vue, but right now I’m content with Hulu, Netflix, and Amazon Prime on my phone. And if there’s a series I have to see (love The Expanse) I can just buy the season. I gave my TV to my mom, so it’s just the phone for me, or the computer if I’m in the office. It’s weird having to seek something out instead of just having it on — but I watch a lot less stuff that I really didn’t want to see. And no more cable news for me, or news at all. I figure if I need to know about something, it’ll come through Facebook or Balloon Juice.
Adam L Silverman
@efgoldman: I’m not sure the inmates would be happy about that. Also: cruel and unusual punishment.
Shalimar
@Librarian: I like Reynolds’ writing. His near-future worlds always included guaranteed monthly income for everyone. People only worked at what they wanted to do.
Adam L Silverman
@efgoldman: I have no idea.
danielx
@Adam L Silverman:
That would be the second choice.
rikyrah
Ben WiklerVerified account @benwikler
Folks don’t realize how close the GOP is to repealing the affordable care act right now. 1/
Ben WiklerVerified account @benwikler 3h3 hours ago
Replying to @benwikler
Unlike last time, they have the Freedom Caucus—and not only that, the Koch brothers and conservative movement apparatus is on board 2/
Ben WiklerVerified account @benwikler
Simply because there’s so damn much else going on, and because Trump isn’t talking about it, this isn’t the by-far-#1 story yet—but 3/
Ben WiklerVerified account @benwikler 3h3 hours ago
Replying to @benwikler
if the GOP does pull the votes together, they’ll move very quickly. And the Senate could move faster than one would imagine. Moreover, 4/
Ben WiklerVerified account @benwikler 3h3 hours ago
The GOP has something to pull in moderates: $150 billion. To fund “high risk pools,” which don’t work, but that’s a lot of dough. 5/
Ben WiklerVerified account @benwikler 3h3 hours ago
House GOP leadership is spending this weekend intensively negotiating to get moderate Rs on board. They’re close. 6/
Ben WiklerVerified account @benwikler 3h3 hours ago
The only thing that will stop the House moderates from shredding health care is massive pressure from their constituents. Pronto. 7/
Ben WiklerVerified account @benwikler 3h3 hours ago
House Republicans need to feel that they’ll lose their jobs if they vote for this bill. Full stop. And by rights, they SHOULD over this.
Ben WiklerVerified account @benwikler 3h3 hours ago
The new AHCA bill is even worse than the old one. Shreds protections for people with preexisting conditions. Vicious, dangerous, needless.
efgoldman
@lollipopguild:
When our daughter was still at home, mrs efg wanted to make sure she knew all the traditions, so we did the same. Our seders were very eclectic: My (Jewish) parent, her (Catholic) parents, a wonderful friend who’d been thrown out of Catholic seminary when he admitted he was gay, a couple (friends) he was white bread protestant from upstate NY, converted to Muslim, she grew up in a family of snake-handlers in Arizona and was now Buddhist; the assistant priest from mrs efg’s church who was one of the first women in MA to get same-sex married…..
It was a lot like this place.
opiejeanne
@Mnemosyne: I remember that, but I forgot him.
Disney held one of their character proms at the Nixon museum. My youngest said it was a nice facility. I’ve never been.
efgoldman
@danielx:
Hanging around here is way cheaper, and covered by most insurance.
Mnemosyne
@Librarian:
Hell, you can go back to Chaplin’s Modern Problems. It’s not a new worry, and yet nothing has gotten done.
debbie
@efgoldman:
I’m not a fan of salt, but I don’t use the sodium-free version of the Manischevitz mix. That’s like warmed-up styrofoam.
Mnemosyne
@opiejeanne:
G’s been there — he likes presidential libraries, and he’s fascinated by Watergate. He kind of regrets missing his chance to mock the Hewitt version of Watergate.
I’ve been to the Reagan Library to see a Giant Evil Corporation museum exhibit. It was interesting to see the forces at work in Reagan’s election even though I don’t and never will agree with the solutions those assholes came up with.
debbie
@efgoldman:
We were reform, so we celebrated everything. My grandmother did think my grandfather carried it a bit too far when he sang happy birthday to Christ at Christmas Dinner. I think it was the Jack Daniels that was signing.
efgoldman
@rikyrah:
So they’ll spend MORE money just to fuck people over.
Pathological.
chris
@Adam L Silverman: Gorka was running his own rightwing party in Hungary. I read that on an English/Hungarian website (which I can’t find now) that was linked in the comments here maybe two weeks ago.
Felonius Monk
@efgoldman:
Ah, the old Plagiarism gambit.
efgoldman
@debbie:
I bought the Streit’s the other week. It has about a third less according to the panel.
You can always add more; you can’t take it out.
ETA: In this part of Northern RI, the chain markets barely acknowledge that Jewish ethnic food exists. The section in my local Stop & Shop is literally two feet wide of shelf space – just before Passover.
Mnemosyne
@Felonius Monk:
It’s not plagiarism if you steal it from your wife, right?
opiejeanne
@?BillinGlendaleCA: The flood of 1862 destroyed the town of Agua Mansa, and while few people in town died in the flood, the cemetery with about 300 graves was nearly destroyed. It was the largest population center between New Mexico and the Pacific, according to the local historians.
Adam L Silverman
@chris: Yes, I know. But the time that he’s supposed to be doing this doctorate at Corvinus in Hungary is the time that he’s also supposed to be in Garmisch at the Marshall Center. If he wasn’t a full time faculty member and didn’t have any real instructional duties and wasn’t actually in Garmisch and he wasn’t back in Hungary at Corvinus as a student, then where was he during this time period?
Lyrebird
fsilverm@Adam L Silverman:
But isn’t there a Federal hiring freeze on those?
(laughs somewhat bitterly but not as bitterly as she would laugh without the offer of a temporary position that came through a week ago…)
Mnemosyne
@efgoldman:
Back in college, one of my friends who was from NYC was shocked to discover that the Latin market that was the only one within walking distance of campus had NO Jewish food. At all. Even at Passover.
I think he eventually found someone to take him to a supermarket in another neighborhood, but he had to survive on kosher-for-Passover candy for a few days.
chris
@Adam L Silverman: Heh,learning tradecraft at FSBU?
opiejeanne
@Mary G: Heck, I’m 67. You two are just kids.
Ruckus
@chopper:
Haven’t read the thread and can’t speak for my fellow vets but for me, if I never hear another person, well meaning or not, thank me for my service, it would be just fine. I don’t need thanks, I need what the government promised me when I enlisted. Take that away and the next “Thanks for your service,” will have to be pried out of the persons ass.
Adam L Silverman
@Lyrebird: The hiring freeze was lifted about about ten days or so ago – depending on when the paperwork went through. It only counted for executive branch jobs and excepted service (Title 10 uniformed military, Title 10 intelligence, and Title 10 academic) were exempted, though my understanding is that at least on the Army side TRADOC froze the academic searches at the schools within Training and Doctrine Command. That said guidance was handed down with the lifting of the freeze that all executive branch departments, bureaus, agencies, offices, etc should exercise discretion in filling positions in the attempt to streamline and eliminate wasteful spending. So, for instance, Secretary Tillerson has kept the freeze in place for State and, today, released a truly bizarre outline for eliminating 2,300 State Department positions. This is absolutely bugfuck nuts!
Adam L Silverman
@chris: Doubtful. He has no tradecraft.
Mnemosyne
@Adam L Silverman:
That’s what Tillerson would do if he did a hostile takeover of another company — mass layoffs, cut expenses to the bone, extract as much cash from it as he can, and then sell it to the next sucker.
The scary question is, who is he picturing doing the buying once he’s done? ?
Lyrebird
@debbie: That’s what me and the kiddo do, without drinking, when we’re with the practicing-Christian side of the family in December! Helps that 1) “Happy Birthday” is a song the kid learned very early and 2) that side of the family is very glad to see any gestures towards what for them is the meaning of the holiday… they take their faith seriously in a Jimmy Carter or Heifer Project kind of way, nothing like the creeps on TV who use it to harm others.
efgoldman
@Mnemosyne:
Yeah, but that was an ethnic market. I wouldn’t expect, for instance, the Asian markets or Portuguese markets here to have any, either. But Stop & Shop is a national chain (also Giant and Food Lion, and others). The “Asian” section is a whole row. Some of it is almost authentic.
ETA: Nobody could get him to Fairfax?
Adam L Silverman
@Mnemosyne: Putin wants State curtailed in general and USAID curtailed in specific. It is USAID that does the civil society building work in the former Soviet republics and a lot of other places. It is USAID officers who are in charge of handling refugees in places where Russia would like to exacerbate refugee flows to achieve his own ends. Such as in Syria. What Tillerson is proposing would destroy USAID. It was difficult enough for Secretary Clinton to bring USAID more fully under the State Department. There was a lot of heartburn and trouble and unhappiness on the USAID side of the foreign service when that was done. And that wasn’t completely absorbing USAID and then gutting the USAID officers and curtailing their mission.
Lyrebird
@Adam L Silverman: Okay let’s see if I can do strikethrough here…
Fix’t.
Ruckus
@Jeffro:
Back in the early 90s I had machines that could run unattended. One for weeks at a time. Another for about 8-10 hrs at a time. Load it in the morning and then just before you go home. 20 hrs a day without supervision. Another could run for about 24 hrs without attention. Every day I turned out the lights and locked the door. Machines could be running and all it cost to operate was the electrical bill.
So I’m part of the problem of automation. But the machines could do things that humans could not, and programing them was actually pretty simple, even back then. With not enough trained people to do the work one had to automate to stay in business. And up until then I heavily supported local apprenticeship programs and got a number of very good craftsman out of that. But it still was not enough. So a lot of work went offshore, where manual labor was a lot cheaper. And those companies invested in the automation as well (the machines, even if they required human intervention, could do things manual machines could not.) For a lot of businesses automation is already here and as you stated has been for a long time. What it’s doing now is getting more advanced and more capable. Machines can’t do everything and someone still has to tell them what to do, load parts at some point and fix things when they go wrong. Will the day come when no humans are necessary at all? I don’t think so because while things have progressed in the last 25 yrs, a lot, right now they seem to be somewhat stalled out. The rate of progression has slowed, even as the rate of utilization has increased.
Mnemosyne
@efgoldman:
Technically, it was supposed to be a general supermarket, but in that neighborhood, it was a Latin market.
And Beverly Hills or Pasadena have bigger and nicer supermarkets than Fairfax does.
SFBayAreaGal
@Shalimar: Asimov I Robot series covered this also.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Mnemosyne: Community Property.
Ruckus
@Mary G:
Know someone whose hair turned brilliant white at 28. He grew a mustache and it came in black. Large bushy mane of brilliant white hair and a black mustache. He was mocked mercilessly until he shaved his upper lip.
Adam L Silverman
@Ruckus: Could’ve just died his hair to match the stache.
seaboogie
@Adam L Silverman:
Possibly did not make myself clear. This post was about an actual stellar example of humanity residing in America’s wang, v. the typical “Florida Man” bit o’ weirdness.
And I know that I do not speak only for myself in saying that you are deeply appreciated here. Your willingness to do research and bring expertise upon request and also you showing up throughout the comment thread to reply to comments makes you a major asset in this joint.
FL harbors a lot of deep weirdness in it’s human inhabitants, but you and the singular Cracker more than offset the numerous Darwin Awards residents in your hood. And also the fellow that tidies veterans’ graves – y’all restore our faith that FL is not entirely whack. I lived in Miami for a year in ’01, and boy – howdy – did I ever get an education in the weirdness of tropical USA.
ETA: A friend of friends of mine there have a buddy who is a bodyguard. Ex-military, he joined AA after being addicted to meds after having parachuted into a tree when in the military. He had some pretty interesting tales – including one where he quit a job, and his client was whacked the next week.
efgoldman
@Ruckus:
One of my married-in aunts had white hair by the time she got married in her early 20s. She never colored it; strikingly beautiful woman. Long gone now.
Ruckus
@Adam L Silverman:
Remember Cheers? Remember Norm walking in the bar and everyone says his name? We would walk in a place we hadn’t been in a year and they’d all remember him and do the same. I’d be invisible. He wasn’t giving up that hair. Not until it falls out. And I’d almost bet he’d be a comb over candidate. He hate it, but he’d still do it.
seaboogie
@Adam L Silverman: Hey Adam – can you get me out of moderation at #202. My nym shows up as “undefined”, so I’m feeling kind of between dimensions….
Gravenstone
@Mnemosyne:
Um, he was only 34 when the movie was released.
Adam L Silverman
@seaboogie: Okay, now it makes sense. Thank you for the kind words.
As for Miami – it is basically a plane of existence all to itself. I lived there from 1996 to 1998 while doing my MA in comparative religion.
As to your friend: are you sure you didn’t read a Carl Hiassen novel and are just projecting?//
Adam L Silverman
@seaboogie: Someone else sprung you while I was in the other room.
seaboogie
@Adam L Silverman: Thank ye kindly – and also, nope – that ‘chit really happened. Louie – the body guard in question – was a really buff little bulldog of a fella who wore a jet-black toupee with a ponytail (always fascinating to observe, it was pretty high-quality)*. Joined him and my friends at his favorite German resto in Miami on Valentine’s Day (before my lover passed away the next day), because you just know that a swarthy little fella like Louie really craves schnitzel and spaetzle That whole year was Dali-esque levels of surreal. Read Hiassen in the Miami Herald, and his books are not at all fantastic for “south Florida”.
*My serendipitous nod to hair color on the thread.
Mnemosyne
@Gravenstone:
He sure didn’t look it.
My memory is nagging at me that the “top age” in the book was 25, not 30, but I can’t go look without having my iPad eat my comment.
Adam L Silverman
@Mnemosyne: They adjusted the top age up from book to movie. A few other things were changed as well.
Mnemosyne
@Gravenstone:
@Adam L Silverman:
Found my answer, but can’t link: in the book, the top age is 21, so I may be conflating the book and movie and thinking there’s no way York could pass for 21.
Adam L Silverman
@Mnemosyne: Yep. They adjusted it up. They also changed the ending for the movie. And, I think, one or two of the events that occurred in what the movie conceptualized as DC. And the reason for the creation of the youth utopia is changed from book to movie.
Ian
@Sab:
When you end your sentence with an adjective you sound like an idiot (or the idiot in chief)
You might have been going for that, but trying to sound like Ill Douche only makes you sound like Ill Douche.
Ian
@Timurid:
I call BS on that one. We will have Calvinist law before sharia law. I put free (christian only) education 75 years before Islamic studies are a part of higher educational studies as a mandatory class (for people seeking to teach humanities.)
ProudGradofCatLadyAcademy
@TS:
I love this also. On a trip to Watertown MA, I located a small puritan graveyard, the markers contained colorful epitaphs, and a whole lot of heartbreaking infant markers, several in the same family.
Arlington National, one of the most peaceful places to go to after visiting one of the most harrowing tours of The Holocaust Memorial Museum. Odd it would be so, as both mark places where men’s cruelty to other men are marked.