Republicans outnumber Democrats two-to-one in the mega-MAGA Central Florida retirement development known as The Villages. But that didn’t stop brave resisters from turning out to heckle a pro-police/pro-virus/pro-racism/pro-Trump golf cart parade recently:
Seniors from The Villages in Florida protesting against each other: pic.twitter.com/Q3GRJCTjEW
— Fifty Shades of Whey (@davenewworld_2) June 27, 2020
Perhaps the most famous resister in the community that bills itself as “Florida’s Friendliest Hometown” is Ed McGinty, a mensch who has been conducting a one-man anti-Trump protest for months by parking a cart decorated with anti-Trump signs at busy intersections in The Villages. Slogans include: “Biden Will Kick Trump’s Fat Ass.”
McGinty was attacked after the golf cart parade protest but says he gave as good as he got:
He said he was “driving peacefully” along Old Camp Road when a man with long fingernails reached into his golf cart and punctured his neck while pulling him from the seat.
“Once out and standing I punched his nose with all I have,” McGinty said. “I believe I broke his nose because his eyeglasses went flying…”
McGinty then suggested Trump supporters sell all of their flags and signs “while there is a market for that trash.” He added that if anyone else wants to challenge him, they’ll find him six days a week on a corner in The Villages.
I salute you, good sir, and hope to raise a victory toast to you come November while the Trumpers sulk disconsolately on their lanais.
PS: This morning, an elderly man in a no-show job who divides his time between watching Fox News and cheating at golf retweeted that same clip above to express support for The Village idiots riding in carts:
Thank you to the great people of The Villages. The Radical Left Do Nothing Democrats will Fall in the Fall. Corrupt Joe is shot. See you soon!!!
By “the great people,” Trump means the old man who shouted “white power” at the 8-second mark. May his retirement become official on January 20, 2021.
Raven
I like the sound of “fuck you nazi pig”!
Betty Cracker
@Raven: Happy to see resisters in The Villages connecting with each other and pushing back against all the Trump bullshit.
Nora
There’s something so heartening (and kind of funny) about all these senior citizens cursing their heads off at the Trump assholes. I hope I’m (still) that foul-mouthed when I’m that age. Which will be in a few years, no doubt.
hells littlest angel
Old people yelling at each other. It’s like a blog comment thread come to life!
Rusty
I hope my children would smother me in my sleep before they would let me go live in a place like the Villages. I would love in a van down by the river long before I could face a Florida golf cart community. Ugh. Of course the place is over run with Trump fans.
Dorothy A. Winsor
Yesterday, Mr DAW, DAW-son, and I all got letters from UMich. DAW-son has somehow eluded the alumni association, so his mail comes to us. He should work for the CIA. My alumni mail, btw, is addressed to Mrs. [Mr DAW’s first name] Winsor. Screw them.
Anyway, it was about a sexual misconduct by a doctor from the UM Health Service who died in 2008. They were contacting anyone who was a student there while he was in practice. The mail was from the University which has apparently hired a firm to investigate. They included a number for counseling. It was the first I’d heard of this.
MomSense
I love the fuck trump lady.
MattF
OT. There’s a wonderful essay about Charles Portis at the front page of today’s NYT Book Review. Worth reading.
debbie
@Raven:
My favorite is “Fucking turd!”
Gremcat
WtF does he mean by “Corrupt Joe is shot”. Is he trying to his minions to get rid of the competition?
Dorothy A. Winsor
I laughed out loud at that video. Old people tend to lose their inhibitions. The “Fuck Trump” lady is my hero.
NotMax
Rumor has it the water hazards at the golf courses in The Villages harbor mini-Rovers.
debbie
This thread is long, but is excellent at detailing out these farts’ Dear Leader’s transgressions against the military. As I know they were told when they were young children, “Actions speak louder than words.”
Dorothy A. Winsor
This might be my favorite review of anything I’ve ever written.
Luciamia
It’s an absolute miracle that his fingers didn’t fall off after typing “Corrupt Joe.”
Dorothy A. Winsor
@debbie: Surely this story about the Russian backed hits on US soldiers will damage him. The implications just seem huge
RSA
@Betty Cracker:
The ohmas and opas are really amping it up.
Nicole
I would like the salty-mouthed lady in the black and white shirt with “Black Lives Matter” written on it in Sharpie on the front to be my new grandmother, please. I promise to write and call regularly.
Nicole
@Dorothy A. Winsor: That is a fabulous review! Congratulations and well deserved.
debbie
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
I just don’t see how any veteran can possibly support him after this.
debbie
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Nice review!
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Nicole: @debbie: It wasn’t even that it was positive. It was that the book so clearly spoke to that reader who needed it. I was touched.
Phylllis
@debbie: I keep thinking about the fellow who happily handed over his Purple Heart to Trump. So no, many veterans will not turn from him.
Citizen_X
Rudy?
Betty Cracker
@Citizen_X: Hahaha! Could be!
evap
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Your story reminded me of getting mail from Boston University when my daughter was a first year student. They were trying to get us to join a parents group or something (setting us up to donate, no doubt.) The letter was addressed to “Dr. and Mrs. <husband name>”. (We both have PhDs, by the way, and I would never dream of using the Dr. title.) Anyway, I sent them an angry email pointing out that we both are equally entitled to the “Dr.” title and we have different last names. The apology email we got was epic and they never ever got it wrong again. Someone in that office got royally chewed out, I’m guessing. Never gave them money, though.
Congrats on the book review, too! I bought an ebook of the first one and will read it once I’ve finished my current book. It sounds like something I will like!
satby
@Phylllis: if they get that information from some trusted source they will. That’s the trouble, any news sources that report even semi-objectively conservatives have been brainwashed into ignoring.
debbie
@evap:
Funny. My dad died back in the 1970s, and my mother had all kinds of problems getting bills in her name. American Express was the worst; it took her hours to get them to agree. When the next bill came, it was addressed to “Mr. Evelyn…”! They just could not let go of the fact.
cope
There is absolutely no alternate universe in which I would voluntarily live in The Villages. Just the concept of such a place has haunted me during the 30 years we have lived about an hour away from there.
However, in a nightmare Twilight Zone scenario where I wake up living in The VIllages, my first point of contact would be Mr. McGinty. He must have incredible fortitude to be able to thrive amongst the Villagers.
JPL
Lindsay is off with trump apparently to play golf. Hopefully, trump brought balls cuz Lindsay is once again showing he has none.
WaterGirl
That is not a set of words I ever expected to see together:
Barney
It wasn’t yesterday, it was 2 weeks ago. That also fits with the stupid “Happy Birthday Trump” message, and the multiple Covid-19 cases in The Villages this week.
JPL
From the Lincoln Project
prostratedragon
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
“DAW-son has somehow eluded the alumni association, so his mail comes to us. He should work for the CIA.”
Right you are, ’cause they will track. you. down! 8D
That case broke the news a few weeks ago. Naturally UM was being stubborn about some disclosures or something, but I think they know they’re going to have to be forthcoming about it. Have not heard where the legal proceedings are at, maybe trying to estimate the amount of damage?
SFAW
@Gremcat:
Either them, or he’ll farm it out to the other St. Pete, i.e., the one across the Pond. [OK, I expect it would actually be Moscow. Cut me some slack.]
SFAW
@WaterGirl:
And, yet, somehow, it’s not a surprise.
SFAW
@JPL:
Well, the Traitor-/Murderer-in-Chief heard Graham was thinking about considering that he might possibly furrow his brow, so he wanted to smack the potential impulse down ASAP.
lurkypants
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Hmmm. I got a letter from them recently but haven’t opened it (figured it was just a fundraising appeal). My only encounter with Student Health Services was in the mid-90s, when, during a pelvic exam, the (female) practitioner (I think she may have been an NP rather than a GYN) asked me my major, and when I told her I was a law student, she actually FROZE and told me I wasn’t supposed to tell her that.
The exam was uneventful, so I brushed it off, but this gives it new context, no?
danielx
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
It took decades of not giving them money before various alumni groups figured out i was a hopeless case.
SFAW
@evap:
And your husband allowed you to send that?
KIDDING!!! But I seem to recall that that’s how a number of morons/institutions would respond “back in the day.”
Dorothy A. Winsor
@lurkypants:
They sent the letter to people who were there between the mid-60s and the early 2000s. I didn’t open mine at first either because I thought it was fund raising, but Mr DAW opened his.
SFAW
@danielx:
Gee, it only took us about two days.
prostratedragon
@lurkypants:
I’ve mislaid the article I saw, but that case was a male doctor who attended to many of the male athletes.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@evap:
I used the Dr. title only in professional situations. Otherwise, who cares? But I never write to protest. I’m afraid that will just encourage them.
danielx
Perhaps he read that statement of Graham’s to the effect that the campaign needs to make it more about the issues and less about personality.
Which I grant is one of the stupidest public statements I’ve ever read, even for Lindsay Graham.
Capri
@lurkypants: When I was in veterinary school I went to a local women’s health clinic in West Philly. The Ob/gyn I saw was a pleasant man with a first name I remembered because the only other individual I knew with that name was a famous frog.
He has since become extremely well know, the infamous convicted murderer Kermit Gosnell
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@SFAW:
I’m sure Trump fantasizes about when Biden gets his Secret Service detail when he becomes the official nominee, an undercover FSB/GRU agent will get Biden alone, point a silenced pistol at him and say, “Presidents Putin and Trump send their regards, comrade”, and pulls the trigger
danielx
@SFAW:
Well, I’m slow that way. Took me a while to figure out that when a total stranger begins a phone conversation by asking how you are, it’s a prelude to asking how is your bank balance.
Cheryl from Maryland
@evap: I kept my maiden name when I married in 1979. We immediately went to Chicago so I could study at the UofC. The UofC wasn’t used to couples with two different last names — my id first read “Cheryl Washer Washer,” then they did a typo in fixing it so my id then read “Cheryl Ednaer Washer.” They also didn’t want to give my husband library/gym privileges as we had different last names until I remarked that apparently my brother could get in with no problem.
SFAW
@danielx:
Well, you’re way ahead of me on that one.
SFAW
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Fantasizes? It would surprise me not one iota if he had already discussed that concept with “key persons.”
Betty Cracker
@Barney: Thanks, I’ll fix it. Not sure why it’s just now trending on Twitter.
debbie
@danielx:
Maybe he invited Graham to “disappear” him.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Betty Cracker: looks like trump retweeted “Thank you!” to white power this morning
danielx
@debbie:
Possible, but people willing to publicly defend him be getting thinner on the ground.
JPL
@debbie: Didn’t Putin hack Lindsay’s computer? With Lindsay, trump knows he doesn’t have to go that far.
raven
@evap: In my first marriage my wife was a Dr and the alumni letters that read Mr and Mrs really pissed her off.
Cameron
Nowhere near The Villages, but I live in a neighborhood full of Olds developments (live in an Olds development myself, although I’m one of the Youngs at age 69). B’lieve somebody should drive the sound truck through The Villages with this cranked up to 11: https://youtu.be/pHjOuS-rABU
Feathers
I would seriously like to get that lady’s “Fuck Trump” bray as a ring tone.
Shantanu Saha
I noticed in the video that almost nobody was wearing masks, either the shitheads or the protestors. No masks, but lots of spittle-flecked yelling in people’s faces. There’s going to be a whole lotta COVID happening in the Villages in a few weeks.
rikyrah
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Just a deliberate attempt at distraction from the TREASON???
O. Felix Culpa
@Cheryl from Maryland: Ha! Are you a doppelgaenger? I too got married in 1979 and immediately moved to Chicago to go to UofC. What a weird and wonderful world.
I experimented with a double-barreled name for a while, but went back to just using my maiden name fairly quickly. It felt more comfortable.
Cameron
@Shantanu Saha: Where is our generation’s Jerry Lee Lewis? “Whole lotta COVID goin’ on!”
MagdaInBlack
The “Fuck Trump” lady can come hang with me anytime.
Sorta relevant: my husband died 23 years ago and Ive moved 3 times. I still get mail addressed to Mrs. His Name.
ThresherK
Not going to doxx anything by saying so, but my wife’s name is Smith, and she kept it.
When unknowing people used to call us and address a man picking up the phone as “Mr Smith”, or a woman as “Mrs ThresherK”, we always had the out of saying “ooh, there’s nobody here by that name”.
That was in the 90s when the signal to noise ratio of incoming phone calls was much higher.
Jeffro
“Corrupt Joe”
”Crooked Hillary”
IF THEY’RE SO CORRUPT AND CROOKED, THEN WHERE ARE THE PROSECUTIONS YOU LYING ASSHOLE?
losing the election is not NEARLY enough for this scumbag.
gwangung
As a higher ed fundraiser…your instincts are correct.
SFAW
@Jeffro:
Saw some of his tweets, including stuff like that, at #TRE45ON a few minutes ago. It’s almost as if he’s screaming (more) incoherently, saying any words that pop into his tiny head, including many of his “greatest hits.” Obama, Hillary, “Corrupt Joe,” Hunter Biden, and so forth. He tweeted something about Low IQ Biden; which is the pot calling the alabaster black.
I’m torn between wanting his tweets to disappear, and someone endlessly tweeting “Dumbass Donnie,” Deadbeat Donnie,” “Traitor Trump,” and so forth, which would hopefully induce him to start screaming (even more) incoherently in public.
Zinsky
I have relatives that live in The Villages in Central Florida. Trump Central. Sickening. Upper middle class white people who are used to being waited on. If COVID wiped out most of the population there, the world would be a better place!
Booger
@cope: “I’M NOT A NUMBER. I AM A FREE MAN!”
Jim, Foolish Literalist
via the Hoarse Whisperer, Ed McGinty’s twitter feed.
Mike in NC
Our friends in Tampa called last night and said being in Florida right now is like a scene out of “Night of the Living Dead”.
Aleta
patrick II
Is there something Freudian going on with Trump there? Is it language Trump should use just after he is found to be O.K. with Putin shooting our soldiers?
cope
@Booger: Thanks for that, how relevant. Now I have to see if “The Prisoner” is streaming anywhere.
tom
@Dorothy A. Winsor: First, congrats to your son for eluding the UMich Alumni Association. I’ve never been able to do that.
I also live in Ann Arbor, and the sexual misconduct thing is turning into a major scandal. Here is one of multiple stories about it.
tl,dr: Dr. Robert Anderson was a physician at UM in the student health services. Rumors of misconduct with male students reached an administrator, who tried to fired him in 1979. But for reasons that are not clear, Anderson instead went to the athletic department, where he is accused of misconduct involving perhaps hundreds of male athletes until his retirement in 2003. He died in 2008.
The U now has several lawsuits against it due to this. The U and its current president, Dr. Mark Schlissel, who was not around when all this was going on, is trying to get a handle on all this by contacting anyone who might have had contact with Anderson to get their stories. I think this is a serious attempt to make amends, I don’t think it is an attempt to bury anything.
Sloane Ranger
@raven: Not surprised, according to Lady Troubridge’s Book of Etiquette (a book whose rules I live by :)), where the wife of a married couple is a Doctor but the husband is a plain Mister, the proper way to address letters and announce them at Receptions is Doctor Elizabeth Smith and Mr Mark Smith as her social title outranks his. OK, the copy I have was published in the 1950’s so it hasn’t caught up with the modern trend for married people to keep their own name, but the principle of the one with the “higher” title going first is well established.
WaterGirl
@tom: @Dorothy A. Winsor:
I worked for the same University I graduated from. I got the Alumni Association to stop calling me when I told them I worked fr the University and they should call me when the University started paying their professional employees what they were worth.
Never got another call!
Alison Rose
@Feathers: SAME. And, if I had one, a doorbell tone.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
Regarding the shooting last night at the Brionna Taylor protest:
1. Alleged shooter was a white guy with a LatinX name who’d been repeatedly run off the protest site by his fellow protestors and was possibly homeless and taking advantage of the situation there. According to my cursory scan of Courtnet, he had zero criminal/civil legal history here until April, when he’d been subject to a domestic violence order by a roommate or domestic partner.
2. He’s been arrested a few times there. On 6/17, he was arrested with a handgun and 2 magazines, which were unlikely to have been returned as he hadn’t been formally arraigned and the arrest slip included using the weapon as an aggravator to an existing charge, making it evidence.
3. He whined to my oldest and middle daughters about the pistol and mags not being returned when they interacted with him some time after 6/18. He apparently glommed onto some group my middle daughter was spending time talking to, went through her photos on her camera. Oldest daughter was displeased and said the guy seemed to have boundary issues. She’s going to talk to middle daughter about her judgment about the sort of people she finds herself drawn to as “wise”. Nothing she could put her finger on, but she’s a little shaken by that connection and tested me a photo she took of middle daughter talking with dude in photo.
4. I didn’t like the tents, and was really disappointed to learn that Occupy was there. I know that it is really cool and great among the patchouli and hackey sack crowd to “stick it to the man” crowd to put up tents in public spaces and talk about the wisdom and endurance of the homeless, but I’m pretty much like Lenin about my disdain for the homeless demographic, and feel like all you wind up with are aggressive moochers who get wasted, fight, molest pets and shit on the sidewalk. The moment the first overnight tent showed up, something stupid was destined to happen.
5. How does a homeless guy acquire a second pistol shortly after losing the first? Plus, his shooting stance was solid, looking at the video. Seems coincidental that yesterday was already a powderkeg because of the announcement that white supremacist militia was coming to clean out the park. There were a few milling about but their rally fizzled (about 15 showed up) and was held elsewhere. The day was otherwise peaceful. How’d this clown get armed up?
JPL
@patrick II: Yeah the Secret Service will tell him to tone it down.. I jest.
Miss Bianca
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Wow, they haven’t sent one to me yet. And I *know* the UM alumni association has my address, because reasons which you just described
@prostratedragon: Ah, well, that might explain it, then. Although because of my first name, the institution seems to have forgotten that I’m actually female.
Mandarama
@O. Felix Culpa: Just waving at you and Cheryl from Maryland (and I think there are other UofC alum jackals). My oldest just got to have two wonderful exhausting first-year quarters there before coronavirus sent him home to have a miserable spring quarter here at home. ? We don’t know yet what they will do in the fall, but he misses his second home and house mates desperately.
Nelle
@ThresherK: I kept my name. When I’d get a call asking for Mrs. X, I would gasp and cry out, “is she coming back now? I gotta get out if here!” and slam the phone down. Another variation? “Wait. There’s a Mrs. X? ” and yell” that guy has been lying to me.” Juvenile but entertaining.
Ruckus
@Nora:
I learned to swear working in dad’s machine shop, starting when I was 11-12 and in the navy, let alone just being around other kids. Some of whom could hold their own against anyone’s usage. Catholic HS freshman year – interesting 20 mile bus ride to and from. I’m now a geezer and haven’t forgotten a word. Swear words that is.
JPL
While playing golf, trump mysteriously deleted the tweet.
MomSense
Is it my imagination or was there no mention of the Russian bounty on US and U.K. troops in Afghanistan on Meet the Republican Press. I was doing chores while it was on, but I don’t think I heard anything about it.
bluehill
@JPL: “All power”
raven
@ThresherK: My wife kept her maiden name and the little old ladies in the Appomattox court house about fell out when we went to get the license!
raven
@Ruckus: fuckin a
JPL
@MomSense: CNN has covered it several times on various shows.
SFAW
@Ruckus:
I realize I’m a bad person, but the first “thought” that popped into my head when I read that was an old joke, the punchline for which is
“Well, Sister, did you find they call a spade a spade”
“Oh, no, Mother, they call it a ‘fucking shovel.’ “
SFAW
@raven:
Isn’t the the proper conjugation “Fuckin A, Bubba”?
arielibra
Just to close the circle: I refused even to open alumni association letters addressed to “Mrs. [his first name]” (on the grounds that there’s no such person) — to such great effect that not only do they never contact me, I don’t even appear in the alumni directory any more.
raven
@SFAW: I’m old school.
JPL
@bluehill: Power to the People.
Betty Cracker
Trump’s minions deleted the tweet quoted in the original post, where he gives a shout-out to supporters, including the “white power” dude. I’m surprised they bother anymore. Trump retweeted several tweets from a Q-loon this weekend, and hardly anyone turned a hair. We’re all more used to this shit that it’s healthy to be.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
For those of you of my vintage, yes, that’s Bowzer from Sha-Na-Na. I honestly can’t quite remember why I remember Sha-Na-Na…. I think they were like a doo-wop version of the Monkees, a live-action Banana Splits
Betty Cracker
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: The Villages went 70% for Trump in 2016, as did my county, which is one over from The Villages. I don’t think Biden will carry this part of Florida. But the erosion of support among seniors looks real to me. I think there’s an excellent chance Biden will carry Florida, and if he does, that’s ballgame.
Jinchi
But did you see it before?
SFAW
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Not really. They attempted to revive 50s/doo-wop music during the early 1970s, as opposed to a made-up “group” for a TV show. I seem to recall that some of them went to Columbia, but I might be mixing up “facts.”
I saw them at Carnegie Hall (yeah, I know), with Cheech & Chong as the lead-in, and Keith Moon as the MC.
O. Felix Culpa
@Mandarama: Chicago is a great place for the youngs. (And many olds too, although I have relocated.) I hope it will be safe for your son to go back soon.
Amir Khalid
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I remember them from their TV show.
Barbara
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: I know you have posted about your daughters previously, but that would really shake me, to know that I was being cultivated by someone with so many “issues,” being kind, or someone looking for an easy mark, being less kind. And it would shake me if it were one of my kids. Speaking from observation of my siblings and cousins, some people are really drawn to rescue troubled souls and have difficulty distinguishing troubled with a little “t” from TROUBLE with a capital “T.”
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@SFAW:
wow, that’s a line up! and Bowzer is one those who went to Columbia, which is in his twitter bio, Sha-Na-Na is not
Cheryl from Maryland
@O. Felix Culpa: Or maybe we are long lost twins? I was in the History of Art Department.
Kay
I love the new excuse for why Trump isn’t popular “his HEART isn’t in it”. He doesn’t WANT to win.
Unfuckingbelievable. They STILL don’t see what he is- they still don’t understand that he’s a mean-spirited moron who doesn’t do anything halfway decent because he can’t – it isn’t IN him. It’s like asking a parrot to be a cardboard box. No matter how many polls you show the parrot he can’t turn into a box. The parrot may want to be a box! Doesn’t matter.
Amir Khalid
@SFAW:
How good was the MC? As I recall, he had issues with bipolar syndrome that sometimes made him hard to rely on at his regular job.
Feathers
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Thanks for this. It helps me understand the differential between the number of shots fired and number of casualties.
I hadn’t pegged the tents themselves as a cause of the problems of Occupy, but it does make sense. If tents are needed for sleeping, they should be taken down again in the morning. If you can’t handle those logistics, you shouldn’t be having a tent city. Also, makes drugs too easy.
Is there something about Lenin and the homeless I am unaware of?
raven
@Amir Khalid: It’s not shanana but it’s worth a look
Planotones American Hot Wax Come Go With Me
japa21
@Kay:
Love that. Rotating tag lines galore.
Kristine
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Congratulations!
lurkypants
@prostratedragon: Oh, I get that. I remember thinking at the time she wasn’t too sure of her skills, but I wonder now if there wasn’t some tetchiness about people looking behind the curtain at SHS, as it were. Maybe she knew something, and didn’t like the idea of law students being around.
Or maybe she just wasn’t very good at her job.
lurkypants
@Capri: !!!!!!!!!!!!
raven
@SFAW: They also played Woodstock. I saw them with Tull at the Aragon in. . . Chi-Town!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
if like me you see Mel Brooks trending and your heart leaps, it’s because he turns 94 today.
Happy 94th to the 2000 Year Old Man
ETA:
@raven:
I used to know that, and forgot.
SFAW
@Amir Khalid:
I was in my mid teens, so I wasn’t really tuned in to the various psych/substance issues that Keith (or anyone else, for that matter) had. That said, he was fine, and for the finale/encore, he dressed up in gold lame, and was the drummer for some 50s-era instrumental with a good drum solo in the middle.
A couple of years later, I saw him and his bandmates on their “Quadrophenia” tour, I had seats around the tenth row. THAT was a pretty good show. [Yes, they played a lot more than just Quadrophenia songs.]
ETA: Until you just mentioned it, I was unaware of him being bipolar.
SFAW
@raven:
Wow!
raven
@SFAW: Out of my brain on the train. . . .
mrmoshpotato
The silly rabbit is probably on to something.
Elizabelle
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Bowzer’s a cool guy.
He was out campaigning for Elizabeth Colbert Busch — that would be Steve Colbert’s sister — when she ran to unseat Mark Sanford in the Charleston area some years back.
He’s a committed guy, and very approachable. Democrats could do a lot worse.
raven
@SFAW: At the Hop, Woodstock.
how fucking awful
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Gin & Tonic
@SFAW: The Columbia connection is true. They started out of a glee club there. I have a friend who was a student there at the time, and was part of that crowd, but decided the doo-wop revival wasn’t going anywhere, so he left. Just before they started making serious money.
Betty Cracker
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Glad your girls are safe! It does seem odd that a person with no money was able to quickly acquire another gun. Hope they get to the bottom of it.
Ruckus
@SFAW:
That sounds about right but this was an all boys technical school. The only woman on the entire campus and the seminary next door was the school president’s secretary. There were only 3 or 4 assistant teachers in the school. One who, like me also wasn’t catholic, worked in the shop I attended. Everyone else a priest or brother attending the seminary. Close to the weirdest cult I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen a few – always from the outside. I’d make a list but you all would want to have me committed, just based upon just the exposure. But rest assured, what I learned from each one was that cults are called that for a reason, and it’s not a good reason. At all.
raven
@Gin & Tonic: Was Sharon Stone with them?
Walker
@Kay: It is Lost Cause v 2.0
Feathers
I went to Wikipedia to look up Sha Na Na. I was right that I remember seeing their name all the time, but never hearing any music. But then, holy shit:
Here’s a link to a longer article about the case linked from Wikipedia: 48 Hours: The Great Pretender
Jim, Foolish Literalist
only a couple of attacks?
Ruckus
@SFAW:
No.
It’s fuckin a or FUCKIN A. And I was stationed in Charleston SC, the location of the start of the civil war, in the navy. This was 50 yrs ago but you’d never know that it wasn’t 150 yrs ago, based upon all the reminders of how great that war was, and they lost.
Omnes Omnibus
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: That is real? Not a spoof account? I.Can’t.Even.
Hoppie
@Nelle: I just don’t answer numbers that aren’t already in my address book. Voila!
Gin & Tonic
@raven: About a decade too young. Obviously I’m missing some connection here.
Barbara
@Kay: Trump is still running off the fumes of 2016.. He honestly believes that he won because of his own strategy and decisions instead of being the beneficiary of misogyny, and random and not so random luck. A rational person (like Obama) would realize that even without extraordinary events, the second run for president has to be premised on a different strategy because they have a record. So if Obama ran in 2012 using the same slogans (Yes we can!) it would have been considered an acknowledgment of failure — certainly the MSM would have spun it that way.
For Trump to be going out there and using MAGA the same way he did in 2016, should be seen as an admission of FAILURE on his part. In reality, failure or not, he is a one trick pony. Some people (deplorables) love that trick — basically sowing division among Americans by appeals to racist impulses– and many others were willing to overlook it — it wasn’t a deal breaker, which says bad things about them as well. I have no doubt that those who embraced the hate are still there. I hope that there are fewer of those who are willing to overlook the hate.
MattF
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I do wonder how much of the inaccuracy in that tweet is deliberate and how much is just Trump being incoherent. OTOH, since it’s all lies anyhow…
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Maybe it’s just me, but this seems worse than apocryphal stories of hippies spitting on Vietnam vets.
Ruckus
@SFAW:
Jon went to Columbia.
And no I don’t particularly like their music, then or now.
MomSense
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Dammit, I’m glad they are ok.
raven
stupid
raven
JPL
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Russia did not directly attack the troops. They paid the Taliban to do that.
Baud
@Barbara:
GOP 2019: All Trump had to do is not kill a couple of hundred thousand Americans and we’ve got it made…
J R in WV
My brother recently sold out their property in the Hill country of TX in order to move to a retirement community just north of San Antonio, IIRC. Not “The Villages” but something similar — maybe The Pines? Golf courses, community centers, and, because it is Texas, a big shooting range over on one corner of the place. He and his wife bike over there every week or so to shoot together.
A hunting buddy of his moved there some little while ago, which is why they picked that particular one. Seems really weird to me! You still own a home, still have a yard to mow, or to hire done, etc, etc. Just, why? And of course, in TX, all Trumpers, all of ’em.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Betty Cracker:
Particularly as this dude isn’t at all one of the homeless I’m accustomed to seeing anywhere downtown – and there is a regular bunch, each kind of having a “preferred” turf.
Ruckus
@Feathers:
What do you do with the tent during the day if you have to take it down every morning and put it up again each night, plus any thing that is inside the tent? The problem isn’t the tent, it’s the homelessness.
You can’t get rid of the homelessness by getting rid of the tent. You can’t get rid of the homelessness by running off the homeless. You just make it worse or send it somewhere else. The tents and the people aren’t the problem, their health/work or lack of/a place to live is. We have people who make billions off of other people and people who can’t for some reason fit in. Is that their fault or the fault of the system that can’t accept them? Likely both but the solution is not to make it worse so they go away, because they don’t. And there are more and more of them as time goes on, because we are not even trying to solve the problem in any way, meaningful or not.
hitchhiker
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Preach. We’re up against this dynamic in Seattle right now, as you may have heard. It shrinks the potential of meaningful outcome like salt on a slug.
raven
@hitchhiker: As does “Defund The Police”.
Omnes Omnibus
@Ruckus: Preach!
MagdaInBlack
@raven:
Sha-Na-Na and Tull !? Interesting combination.
SFAW
@Ruckus:
OK, thanks. Always glad to learn something knew, or have my mistaken “knowledge” corrected.
raven
@SFAW: How about “He had a case of the ass like a Russian Bear”?
Ruckus
@Omnes Omnibus:
I believe the word we are looking for is desperation. From both himself and his supporters. The writing is not on the wall, it’s on most every wall. Strong detractors, even in places such as the Village in FL. The press is/has turned against him. I’d bet that a lot of his political support is paper thin. Time is running out, and it’s obvious. And we keep talking about how close it is, how every vote counts, and I’d bet he knows he’s not going to lose, he’s done with this as he has with every other “project” he’s ever attempted, he’s fucked it up. Completely. And he knows that bankruptcy was far easier and accepted than winning the worst president ever award.
hitchhiker
@Betty Cracker:
I think we’re resigned to the fact that it will never stop. Before the election, during the election, after the election, after Jan 20, 2021, nothing and nobody will stop him from publicly doing exactly what he’s been doing since twitter became a thing.
If Jack closed his account and banned him from the site, I guess. But aside from that, he’s never going to stop, and the only thing to do is remove him from office so the damage inflicted is kept to a minimum.
Hungry Joe
Even if a White House-assigned journalist somehow believes that Trump was not informed of the Russian bounty program, the question they should ask — and ask, and ask, until they get an answer — is, “So, now that you know, what are you going to do about it?”
Frank Wilhoit
@Capri: Long, long ago, in a universe far, far away, I attended a state land grant university in the Great Plains, which (lest any doubt arise) are plainer than they are great.
Anyhow, this university had a Board of Regents, of which all the faculty stood in immediate terror — I mean, really immediate, second by each painful second.
I do not recall the exact number of members of the board, but it was a reasonable and (in itself) harmless number, such as six, or possibly seven.
No fewer than three of the board members were named Kermit.
Each of the three was a dentist.
cckids
You would think, and yet . . .
He’s been so determinedly awful since the beginning, his base either love that about him or cannot admit they were wrong. Seriously – harassing and belittling a Gold Star family; the “grab ’em” tape; making fun of opponent/family’s looks; asking Russia to hack Hillary; mocking McCain for being a POW; mocking a disabled man; lying about all of this and every other damn thing since forever. They knew who and what he was, and they love it. Not one iota of the overwhelming mass of incompetence and corruption he’s shown since his election has changed their opinion one bit. Which says more about them than it does about him.
Literally nothing will change his supporters’ minds about him. Not anything. Ever.
JPL
@Hungry Joe: He’s either incompetent, or he knew and did nothing.
trnc
So he was there for over 30 years. I realize that was before the Me, Too movement, but there’s no way there weren’t multiple complaints at the time or that the muckety mucks didn’t know about it.
Elizabelle
@JPL: My guess is on “knew and did nothing.” Because action traces back to Putin.
Even though he does not read his briefings, cannot believe his briefers would not have emphasized that news. And wondering if the service chiefs know of it — what did they do?
uoq
@mrmoshpotato:
Dick Cheney might just be expressing his opinion that the default “conservative” position should be (a) that masks/face coverings should be mandatory in all indoor public places, and (b) open everything up to the extent consistent with this. (c) Social physical distancing where possible.
And/or he’s on immune suppressants and is personally irritated that the Republican position re COVID-19 is that people like him should die.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Hungry Joe:
“We’re looking into it very strongly. Very strongly.”
Bill Arnold
@mrmoshpotato:
Dick Cheney might just be expressing his opinion that the default “conservative” position should be (a) that masks/face coverings should be mandatory in all indoor public places, and (b) open everything up to the extent consistent with this. (c) Social physical distancing where possible.
And/or he’s on immune suppressants and is personally irritated that the Republican position re COVID-19 is that people like him should die.
Feathers
@Ruckus: Apologies for not being clear. I meant tents set up by the protestors, in order to be onsite 24/7. They should be setting up and taking down, to make room for daytime protestors and have somewhere to store the tents.
Homelessness? Yes, we need real solutions to the housing crisis. The baby boom generation decided that the USofA should be built to suit their needs, fuck the fact that the population was sure to grow. The cult of individual homeownership and local zoning is proving a disaster that will need to be reckoned with if we are to tackle the climate crisis. Someone on twitter was saying health insurance was too expensive, how were you supposed to afford that and rent? I pointed out that my starter apartment, which was $750 in 1989, would now rent for $2600.
MattF
@JPL: He’s saying words that he thinks will encourage the cultists and make the bad, evil, traitorous agitators go away. ‘Truth’ is not a consideration.
JPL
@Elizabelle: Someone obviously thought it serious enough to leak the information to the NYTimes. Now all the news services have verified it. Of course he knew and is incompetent.
trnc
@Booger: I like the version with the extra reverb and upgraded soundtrack.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMcjBJEOBco
Villago Delenda Est
@cckids: If the fundigelicals can overlook his sexual immorality (by their exacting standards) they can overlook anything. Some of them actually got a bit miffed about his language, but the leaders still support him avidly.
Baud
@Elizabelle:
JPL
Additional reporting from the NYTimes
But one American official had told The Times that the intelligence finding that the Russians had offered and paid bounties to Afghan militants and criminals had been briefed at the highest levels of the White House Another said it was included in the President’s Daily Brief, a written document which draws from spywork to make analytic predictions about longstanding adversaries, unfolding plots and emerging crises around the world. The briefing document is given to the president to read and they serve as the basis for oral briefings to him several times a week.Asked on Saturday evening how the president could not have known about the report if it had been in his daily brief, a National Security Council spokesman did not immediately respond.
danielx
@Ruckus:
This is true. I was down there a few years back and they are still pissed. Still believe William Tecumseh Sherman was the devil incarnate, too.
JPL
I’m never doing another copy and paste from the NYTimes… what a mess that was.
Amazing that they had a few sources, so hair is on fire in the White HOuse.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I do love a well-thrown elbow
Just One More Canuck
@Nelle:
I go with “This is Constable Jones from the York Regional Police. How are you acquainted with the deceased?”
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@hitchhiker:
The moment that Occupy shows up to your meaningful and justified protest, you’re done – no more meaningful message can be sent. Those fuckups drag in assholes who screw up, crime up (and not in a civil disobedience or even righteous riot way, just filthy preying on humanity way).
I will acknowledge that I genuinely don’t give a single fuck about the homeless at this point – my care and concern is for people who can’t go to work without worrying about an encounter with some hyperaggressive racist cop, and how those cops treat people in their custody.
The conduct necessary to reach that point of derelict homelessness is deliberate, and having those nasty shits take over public spaces while aggressively panhandling low wage administrative staff isn’t endearing to me. The bum that parks his nasty, passed out ass on the bench in front of my office building has pissed/shit himself so often that nobody wants to use the bench even when he’s not there. Anybody that has ever tried to genuinely help him (money, food, bicycle, odd jobs) has lived to regret it.
Kay
I told you guys!
I practice law in a 70% Trump county. These people are my clients. Two weeks into this thing I had (bitterly) concluded the vainest people were the biggest mask opposers. By people, I mean “men”.
“Vanity” doesn’t mean “wears makeup and high heels”. We only call out female vanity but white working class mean wear all kinds of costumes to show their identity. I bet Harley Davidson sells more branded apparel than they do motorcycles.
Sab
OT: have any of you jackals had a cocker spaniel refuse to eat ANYTHING? Our guy is a vaccuum cleaner.
Omnes Omnibus
@Sab: Raw carrots. Cooked ones were fine.
Sab
@Kay: Yes! If Harley Davidson sold branded masks the whole pandemic in USA would be r<1 within a month.
scott (the other one)
@Hungry Joe: Exactly right. And when–not if–they try to deflect with a “we’re looking into it” then you ask the next day. “You said that yesterday and the day before. A hostile foreign power has targeted our soldiers–is the president’s inaction suggesting he’s in favor of these attacks against our fighting forces?”
As to the “nothing loses him support,” the fact that he has any support at all is obviously frustrating. But every poll suggests that he HAS lost support and is continuing to do so. It’d be great if he went down to 1% favorables, but every time he loses another few hundred supporters, our already good chances get better.
Kay
I think they won’t wear motorcyle helmets because what’s the point of a crazy loud huge morotorcyle if you can’t see the driver?
Remember how nuts they went over Obama’s “mom jeans” and the fact that he sets a good example and wears a bike helmet? Male vanity.
Trump has actually messed up my theory since he is the variety of vain that involves high heels and makeup ( as am I) but put him aside for a second, or put him in the female category, whatever.
Sab
@Omnes Omnibus: My cocker stole my husband’s lunch yesterday. He shared it with the rottmix. Rott wouldn’t eat mustard or pickles. Cocker ate everything.
Kay
@Sab:
I made some decisions at the start of the pandemic that have served me well. 1. I would listen to experts, even if they make mistakes they’re well-intentioned and they know more than anyone else. 2. I would do what I could to limit risk while not going broke or sinking my youngest into depression and slothfullness, 3. I would embrace masks as apparel and wear the nice ones the quilters made me.
It’s easier.
japa21
@Sab: Sounds like our late beagle, Maggie. There was nothing she wouldn’t eat. Still miss her 5 years later.
Sab
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I googled my twenty year ago creepy ex. One of his listed addresses was mine. To the best of my knowledge he has never even been in my state. Unpleasantly weird.
raven
@Sab: You are kidding right?
Kay
@Sab:
IBEW sent their members manly masks made of a black textured fabric that is stretchy and really quite nice. They knew :)
Another Scott
@ThresherK: My J kept her maiden name. We’re both PhDs. I often pick up the phone and hear “Mr. HerMaidenName?” and she often gets calls, “Mrs. MyLastName?”.
One of the hazards. ;-)
Cheers,
Scott.
Sab
@Kay: I went to the grocery yesterday wearing my “Don’t drink bleach” mask. I paid the cashier and turned to thank the middle-aged bagger. He burst out laughing when he read my mask. He said “Yeah, and don’t be stupid either.”
raven
A good sized tree fell next door and it is covered with bees. I assume that means there is a hive in there?
MagdaInBlack
@Kay:
Never doubted you for a minute. I see it all day, every day, when I’m at work.
(This is why I call those big, shiny, fancied-up, never been dirty pick up trucks “vanity trucks.” )
Sab
@raven: Sigh. Can’t always be right.
Matt McIrvin
@SFAW: Sha Na Na did have a TV show, though, which is probably where most people remember them. Prime-time comedy-variety show in the late 70s-early 80s, at the tail end of the popularity of these things, but it seems to have survived for several seasons on the strength of the nostalgia wave that produced “Grease,” “Happy Days,” etc
edit: seems to have been syndicated. Avery Schreiber and Kenneth Mars were on it doing comedy bits.
MisterForkbeard
@Kay: I think this is exactly right the right approach. Call it “Vanity” – these jerks are used to be calling stupid by “liberal elites” and they take pride in it. They won’t stand for feeling ladylike.
Call it vanity and all about making themselves preen and try to look sexy and they’re feel all womanly. It’s sad, but letting them know they’re doing a “feminine” thing is probably going to be more effective than logic, reason, or ridicule. Use their own biases against them.
Sab
Barbara isn’t here now, but her advice (how to use parchment paper with cake pans) was excellent. Too bad I didn’t consult her on the icing. Still, the cake was okay.
Original Lee
@Sab: Boiled okra.
MisterForkbeard
@Kay: @Sab: Mask as fashion accessory is fun.
My wife made a bunch of different masks for us (and our friends) out of some really awesome fabric we had lying around – everyone gets their own pattern.
I also bought a couple of facemasks that just read: “Spaceballs The Face Mask” on them, and I get a lot of love from people over 30 about it. Tons of double takes and then laughter. :)
Doug R
@debbie: Here’s the threadreader thread:
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1276914081627279361.html
Kent
I’m a grad of a liberal arts college (1986) and a flagship state school for grad school (1994). I have moved at least 15 times since then including two stints overseas and have never given a dime to either alumni organization, much less ever contacted them with a change of address.
Yet the slick full-color alumni mags follow me like a virus every single month without fail, wherever I go. You can’t hide from them. I don’t know how they do it.
J R in WV
@J R in WV:
Sun City, that’s the retirement community name… there are a couple of them in AZ also, really big, medium sized homes V close together, HOA with rules, I’m sure.
Sab
@japa21: We are still testing to see what he won’t eat. So far we have not found anything. We do try not to poison him. But he hangs out in the kitchen because I am a clumsy messy cook. “No! You may not eat fallen onion bits!”
Kent
Why can’t it be both?
Another Scott
@Mandarama: (Another Maroon here. (’79-’83).)
Cheers,
Scott.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
My mother loved that show!
Misterpuff
@Citizen_X: Senator Bat Boy
Sab
@Original Lee: I will try that.
Ruckus
@Feathers:
Sorry, there are homeless tent cities in LA. I haven’t taken the metro or metrolink trains/buses in a while but when I did we would go by many tents that are homeless “homes.” I’d imagine that many big cities have them now, so I’m used to them and they are better than the people just living on the ground, which I used to see around LA on a daily basis. Back in the oughts recession, I’d see homeless on the RR right of way, in Marin county, CA. Wealthiest county in CA and there were homeless. Hell I almost had to join them. I spent a year as the only tenant in my retail building. I had no where else to go.
Anyway your comment sounded to me like you were discussing the homeless, not protesters.
raven
@Sab: What color do you have? Lil Bit is a blackie.
J R in WV
@trnc:
If this is similar to the Ohio State scandal, perhaps the Doc was preying on young men? Still… horrible that people in charge of protecting young students let this go on, and on, and on. People should lose their pensions, esp if they retired to avoid dealing with it.
Kent
My parents just moved into a small version of one of these here in the edges of the Portland metro area. Probably no more than about 100 units. All very nice. They own a spacious 2-bedroom unit with a patio. The staff do all the exterior yard maintenance and come do any interior maintenance as well if they need it (plumbing, appliances, etc.). There is a community wood shop and a community garden which my dad is happy about. Lots of trails in the nearby park. It’s Oregon so instead of golf carts the seniors seem more partial to 3-wheel bikes and 3-wheel recumbant bikes or trikes, whatever you call them. I also saw some e-bikes. There is public transit to Portland if they want to go to the theater or something.
I’m happy because they are now 1/2 hour closer. I think it will be a good move for them. They are mid-80s but still active.
Sab
@raven: Black and white ( lots of spots). Absolute cutie. The cats even like him
ETA The family cocker of my childhood was black, named Muttley. My mother’s family cocker was also black, named Topsy. I prefer dogs that don’t need fur cuts, but I can’t fault the personality on cockers. Upbeat is an understatement.
Ruckus
@Kay:
And actually makes money at it.
HD has sold themselves out several times over and their fans only want something that looks and sounds like it always has. They’ve taken what they build as far as engineering will go, and the market is dying off. Branded apparel is what they can make money with.
Kay
@MisterForkbeard:
My assistants mother made really nice masks for her, her husband and their 4 children based on their personalities or hobbies. My assistant got purples and greys, a soothing print, which is perfect. She’s unflappable. Serene. Grandma survived a really perilous bout with breast cancer so that family was on board with Covid protection immediately – they want to protect her. And she makes really perfectly constructed masks, I must say.
I don’t like the medical looking ones. I hate hospitals and they remind me of a hospital. I don’t think I’m cool enough for a black mask, although I aspire to that :)
Kay
@Ruckus:
They make me sad because I see so many of the loans. They are good salespeople. Those loans are tragic. I can feel my forehead wrinkle up when they tell me they have one.
My son has kind of a nice hobby these days. He’s a vroom vroom person but he’s obsessed with electric bikes and scooters. He’s getting really good at taking them apart and modifying them and repairing them. He trades and sells them like crazy. He gave me a reworked scooter to play with but he put a governor on it to slow it down, which I found insulting. I am a klutz but I can control my own speed, jerk.
Ruckus
@Kay:
They think they want the risk of no helmet. They are the same people who argued against seatbelts. Being a MAN means taking risks. They probably like shitforbrains because his entire life is a risk. And he’s managed to take many risks and still be standing and hating. He’s their guy. That he looks like and is a cartoon caricature is irrelevant because it’s not about anything but his image. Never has been.
Misterpuff
@Baud: And Sha-Na-Na actually performed at Woodstock (and are in the movie).
Suzanne
@J R in WV: The Sun City in AZ was the very first master-planned age-restricted community in the US. And it is full of GOP assholes. I worked on a hospital replacement project there for the two years before I left AZ. They refuse to incorporate or pay any school taxes but they use County services for EMS and fire and police. The only things to do there are golf and go to the doctor. Terrible.
Just One More Canuck
@Kay:
my wife made two different styles for me – one in a soccer theme (for our daughter) and the other with cat paw prints
kindness
I have wondered about how The Villages have been handling the pandemic & Trump. I mean I knew they were a conservative enclave that has incredibly high STD rates so…..typical old hypocrites I figured. But they’re also a demographic that needs to stay away from covid-19. Once they start dying what are the rest of them thinking?
Ruckus
@Sab:
Bud was a shameless attack eater. Anything, that even approached being food, he’d eat. Black cocker, he was turning gray, (like me) looks a lot like Raven’s dog. In this years calendar. He was not in the least upbeat. A great companion for one person, hell on paws for anyone else. He was a great dog and a good friend. I will always miss him.
Another Scott
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
People who are “right in the head” (for lack of a better term) do not voluntarily soil themselves and all the rest. Your local mental heath system should be treating him. And if your local mental health system cannot do so, then good folks like you need to be making noise – in court if necessary – so that the system can and will treat him.
tl;dr – He’s a suffering symptom of the problem. Not the cause of the problem.
Cheers,
Scott.
patrick II
@JPL:
As dumb as Trump can be about
somemost things he can be very sly in his denials.Another Scott
@Sab: Our rescue mutt Ellie (3/8 Aussie, 1/4 Collie, 1/8 Rottweiler, etc.) eats just about anything white that she finds on our walks. She loves just about any kind of paper. She loves fallen cherries (green, red, black-months-old, doesn’t matter). Black banana peels. Fox poop. Acorns. Mulberries (ripe or not). Just about anything.
We always have a feeling of dread when she start snuffling around in the grass on her walks. :-/
Fortunately, she doesn’t raid the trash cans or pull stuff off the counters!
Cheers,
Scott.
Ruckus
@kindness:
Old people die all the time. I live in a senior (55+) complex and at least 9 people have died out of 140 units in the last year. One was my neighbor who I spoke to often. He was 2-3 yrs older than me. It’s not that you like it but you do get to expecting it. It’s what happens when you get old, you get sick, or at much higher risk and then at some point, your time is up. If you are over 70, you know a lot of people that you’ve out lived. In the last 3 1/2 yrs 9 people I know have passed, not counting the people in my complex. Only one was older than me and only a year. The youngest was 27. The next was a woman I’d known since she was a little girl, she was 42, she left 2 kids, her parents are friends, my age. The other 7 were all in their 60s.
Kent
How do they not pay school taxes? School district boundaries are like counties in that do not leave gaps inbetween. Every square foot of land in Arizona should be zoned to a particular school district regardless of whether there are actually children living there. They may not vote to approve school levies, but they should fall within some school district no matter where they are.
Mark's Bubbie
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Sha-Na-Na was at Woodstock iirc
Heywood J.
So, I guess the tertiary syphilis those geriatric wife-swappers have been passing around hasn’t immunized them from the #TrumpPlague after all? Good luck to Mr. McGinty, but even once Trump is long gone, he’ll still live in a weird fake town stuffed with scumbags and assholes.
Kent
Well no. They build crappy old-technology motorcycles compared to the foreign competition from Germany and Japan. It’s kind of like if GM or Ford was still building 1960s-era muscle cars with big block V-8 engines. People would still buy them and drive them because they would look and sound badass. But they would be as far as you could get from a modern Audi or Lexus.
Ruckus
@Another Scott:
This is what my comment was about. 99.9% of the homeless do not want to be. They got there by circumstance, often not of their own making, sometimes directly due to it. But we are a country that says you are on your own, whatever happens is your problem. Whatever you do to succeed you own that as well. So we have humans that sleep on the street and shit themselves and people that have billions upon billions, massive homes and 200mph cars.
We as a society have to figure out that for most people to be somewhere in the middle the bottom and the top can not be so far apart. There is plenty to go around and most can earn their own way. But today there are some getting far more than earning and many unable to get anything, while the vast majority live almost paycheck to paycheck with a financial system that rewards hoarding by the few. The economy is driven by all of us, not the hoarders nor the totally unfortunate. But the rewards are not shared by all of us.
raven
@Sab: A “party”, that was what my wife’s first one was.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Another Scott:
I lost my patience with him about 7 years ago – he persistently rotates in and out of jail and various mental health treatment facilities, but roars back drunkenly after each time. It’s a great corner for him, although tourist and office worker pickings have been slim since March.
You couldn’t convince him to stay anywhere for voluntary treatment if that included mandatory sobriety. He just wouldn’t stay.
The Very Reverend Crimson Fire of Compassion
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Hellz, yeah! That’s some of the highest praise a writer can receive!
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Kent:
They carve themselves some spiffy age exemptions in the local millage rates.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Another Scott: There is also a problem with a lack of proper restroom facilities.
Ruckus
@Kent:
That is exactly what I said. Just with different words. They build what their customers ask for. They have over the years tried to build better bikes, and have actually succeeded. It didn’t sell. They have build what looks to be a damn fine electric bike, I’d bet it won’t sell either. They never have tried to build to other markets than to the very loyal customer base they have. But that base is getting old and is dying off. I’ve been deeply involved in motorcycles for 53 yrs. Have never ridden an HD. And now I no longer ride anything because I of health issues. I have close to 600,000 miles under my belt and that doesn’t count racing miles. I’ve even been inside the HD racing department and ridden on tour with an ex HD corp. president. I’m familiar with HD and their products.
Patricia Kayden
WaterGirl
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Sad. That’s short for Pathetic, right? Just fewer letters? There’s also Lame.
They don’t even try to make their excuses believable anymore.
laura
Governor Newsom just announced a watch list for 15 counties. Almost everyone at the farmers market was masked and minding their space.
WaterGirl
@Sab: My -ex had a nickname for my cocker spaniel. Hoover.
He would eat anything, even the cob from corn on the cob except:
– the core of a fresh pineapple
– either fresh green pepper, or raw (ate one but not the other)
WaterGirl
@Sab: My cocker figured out how to get into the refrigerator. It had to be taped shut with duct tape.
Elizabelle
@Baud: She’s right. Nancy Smash
I am going to start writing down when I see a journalist pooh-poohing the possibility Trump is owned by the Russians. Have seen some “he’s bad, but not that.” Um, yes. Very possibly that.
WaterGirl
@raven: Yes! When my tree fell, i called the bee people, and I think they estimated that there were 27,000 bees in my tree. They collected them and did whatever they do with them.
James E Powell
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Jon “Bowzer” Bauman is a big time Democratic activist and, based on everything I’ve ever read, a mensch.
The story is that Sha Na Na got the Woodstock gig because they were friends with Hendrix. No idea if it’s true. They came out right when 50s nostalgia was getting started and road the wave. Their name comes from the song Get A Job by the Silhouettes.
Kay
Ha! They’re talking about getting rid of him. Fat chance. The GOP are stuck with the sleazy Trump Family forever.
But. He’s getting weaker. It starts and then it snowballs. We just have to keep piling on.
Kent
@Ruckus: Yeah, OK, I misread your post and responded to the notion that HD modern engineering. I don’t ride anymore but my brother still spends most of his spare time rebuilding and riding motorcycles. He has nothing good to say about HD. I think his current bike is a restored vintage Gold Wing GL1000 that he rebuilt from the ground up. It looks badass with leather bags.
Kay
Now come the regrets…not for what they did to the country. But regretting not doing a strategic impeachment.
catclub
@Citizen_X: Rudy DOES look a lot like Nosferatu!
James E Powell
@Kay:
I read that whole thread, the FOX business guy. That whole world is so twisted from reality that Joe Biden – anathema to the Professional Left – is now a Dangerous Leftist.
I don’t think the press/media is ready for a Trump collapse and it will never acknowledge a Republican collapse.
Kent
@Kay:We would be in the Pence honeymoon phase right now. All the bootlickers in the media would be gushing over GOP daddies and how we need to give him a chance to govern and turn things around. It would be Bush and his codpiece all over again.
They honestly did us all a favor. If Pence were in office we’d still have Barr and Pompeo and McConnell. But they would getting better press coverage and the media would be gushing about the return to normalcy and Pence’s resolute decision-making and attention span compared to Trump. And there would be a constant drumbeat from all sides about how we need to give him a chance to govern.
catclub
I would have to give the GOP Senate credit for better understanding their voters than we do. I suspect they think voting out Trump loses them 30%+ of their voters. They are probably right.
Baud
@Kent:
I think COVID wouldn’t stand a chance against President Pence’s steely gaze.
catclub
My understanding is that the people most likely to spit on returning Vietnam vets were… WWII vets. Who considered them losers.
MisterForkbeard
@Kay: I don’t think it’s going to matter even if he DID drop out. It would demoralize huge amounts of Republicans, and whatever ‘decent’ person they got to run would still have Trump doing crazy racist tweets constantly and trying to hog the attention…
And you’d have numerous examples of that same ‘decent’ Republican praising Trump. For years.
They’re stuck with him. If they’d actually impeached him they might have some kind of a strategic argument (“Look, we did what we could!”) but they didn’t. They just papered over everything he did, again and again. Because they liked it.
Kay
@James E Powell:
Biden as “Leftist” fails, I think, because it has two parts. They know it won’t stick on just Joe Biden so they have to add the connection, how it’s “Leftists who control Biden”. They all do it, including Trump.
I just think their attacks have to be more direct than that.
PST
@Sab:
My doodle ate someone’s discarded tamale wrapped in aluminum foil yesterday. I’m pretty good at spotting that kind of opportunity and foiling her, but I must have been off my game. Once it’s in her mouth there is no longer anything to be done. My worry is diminished today as the foil has started to appear again.
Kay
@MisterForkbeard:
Oh, it’s more than “him”. They’re stuck with the whole Trump Family who have now found a grift that is easier and more lucrative than pretending to build hotels. Ivanka and Jared are never, ever going away and either are the otherwise unemployable sons. This is the best thing that ever happened to any of them.
Kay
@James E Powell:
Also since we have a L, R and Center in the D Party doesn’t describing Biden as a Leftist ruin the chance they can split off our Left flank and make them pull a Nader? That’s something that actually would work.
MisterForkbeard
@Kay: They’re leaning REALLY HARD on the “Biden hides in his basement!” and “Biden has dementia!” primal screams, and neither of them are working.
Mostly because both are obvious lies, and because Trump is literally a worse example of both. Biden gets out, does events, but follows safety protocols. Trump insists HE gets safety while no one else does, and retreats to a literal bunker. They edit videos of Joe where he misspeaks and corrects himself and then pretends its dementia, but Trump goes on Hannity and free-associates for 10 minutes at a time with utter word salad.
It’s only going to get worse for them as they get more desperate and Trump becomes more cowardly and more broken on the world stage.
Baud
@Kay: Doubtful. Our left flank doesn’t really go by what how the GOP portrays our nominee.
MisterForkbeard
@Kay:
No, because they’re simultaneously telling the left that he’s a corporate stooge. Since “The Left” is already convinced of this anyway, they don’t care that the Republicans are telling them two different contradictory things.
They did this in 2016 too. You could see a lot of BernOrBusters (or Steiniacs) saying it: “Even Trump knows Hillary is corrupt!” and they ran with it.
Matt McIrvin
@Kent:
At this point, one of the possibilities that worries me is that Trump suddenly dies, resigns or decides to quit the race sometime between now and November, Pence slots in and cruises to election on this honeymoon wave before there’s any chance to judge him on his own merits. (If Biden’s campaign is smart, and I suspect they are, they’ve got extensive contingency plans for this. Pence’s doofus COVID denialism is an obvious opening.)
debbie
@Jinchi:
Yes, actually I did see plenty of veteran support for Trump.
Mandarama
@Another Scott: ❤️ I think I remember you giving me advice when he was going through the application process! He made the right choice. He loves it there – – he feels like he has found his kind of people in his dorm and wants to stay there the whole way through.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
Fixed.
debbie
@raven:
I’d love to know what Ian Anderson thought of them!
debbie
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Right, sir. //
Tehanu
Me too, though I live on the other side of the country. Cooped up with strangers who happen to be in the same age cohort? Ugh. I’d rather live in a tree with no shoes and play the flute.
debbie
@JPL:
Oh, of course they briefed him; of course they told him. They brief every president, no matter how much they may disdain him.
Omnes Omnibus
This option doesn’t get a lot of publicity.
Bobby Thomson
I want to have Sharon Sandler’s babies.
debbie
@Doug R:
Thanks. Far easier to post this to FB!
Tehanu
@Omnes Omnibus:
It’s a Mudhead thing.
joel hanes
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
The conduct necessary to reach that point of derelict homelessness is deliberate
That’s the final straw. Pied, because I have known some people who became involuntarily homeless because of intractable mental health problems for which they sought help.
susanna
Ken
“Current”?
Jim Appleton
@Matt McIrvin:
Maybe Tom Levenson can chime in …
I was in high school in Berkeley, CA in the mid-70’s. There was a student group who did the same shtick as ShaNaNa. No idea where they went. The genre was not uncommon.
This was in the context of “Happy Days”, “Grease”, and any number of similar sentimental trigger fests, still recent enough that we second-generationers were bathed in it
Also, an obscure follow up is Bob Leonard, an original member who was at Woodstock, went on to a career in linguistics which put him on TV more than a few times.
evodevo
@Just One More Canuck: Yes…I LOVE that routine….Bob and Tom did it one time – hilarious
https://800notes.com/videos/tom-mabe-pranks-telemarketer-with-fake-death-scene
evodevo
@raven: Uh, yeah, probably…you need a beekeeper stat. maybe the local Humane Society or pest control people know one…
prostratedragon
@SFAW:
Correct, at least a couple were Columbia students. I knew Denny slightly, and am sorry to see that he died a year or so ago. His everyday name was Fred Green. Featured in this number:
evodevo
@Kent: Yes. This. I was just saying this to Mr. Evodevo at dinner…it’s just as well the assholes acquitted the Orange Mad King….because that is just what would have happened…and we would still have a Repub Senate and Pence as Prez, probably…now at least we have a fighting chance…
tokyokie
Yeah, this is a dead thread, but whatever.
Shortly after I finished law school at the University of Texas, I received a solicitation to join the Texas Exes, UT’s notoriously persistent alumni organization. I returned the reply card, scrawling on it something to the effect of, “My fondest wish every morning is to learn that, during the night, the University of Texas burned to the ground.”
Never heard from them again. But a year or so ago I needed to get a transcript from there, and now the bastards have my e-mail address.
And I decided a few weeks ago that der Trumpenführer, rather than suffer the most humiliating defeat of any incumbent president since Herbert Hoover, will simply quit the race shortly before the election, claiming that widespread voter fraud had made a fair vote count impossible and that he would not be a party to such a sham. He’ll do it too late for the GOP to replace him, and his action will severely depress Republican turnout. But he doesn’t give a shit, because he’s only concerned about Trump, not his country, not his party, not anything other than him.
SWMBO
@raven: I have friends (in Florida) who keep bees. Look for a local bee keeper association. They can remove the hive and tree (probably leave a mess behind but at least the bees are safe). They take the hive and put it somewhere safe for the bees. Down here, they relocated some from the turnpike to a state park. There is one for each county here because there are too many people and lots and lots of bees. One of the folks on Neighbors app asked about removing bees and they found out that the local beekeepers association has a list that each one gets a turn on helping relocate bees. Depending on whose name comes up next, you could be rolling the dice some.