Happy Mardi Gras! The holiday is huge in Dominica in the Caribbean, where my youngest daughter teaches ballet under the auspices of the Peace Corps. This is from her Facebook page, “Ballet in Dominica.”
A few things you might want to talk about:
- Trump prepares to address a divided audience: The Republican Congress — Which reminds me… I’ll probably be actively Tweeting during the speech, in case you’d like to join in.
- Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds — A depressing piece in The New Yorker on how our brains work, or don’t work. It makes some good points — the ones that say things I already believed. The rest of it is fake news. Sad.
- Trump Learns That a Health Overhaul Is ‘So Complicated’ — Specifically, he said, “nobody knew that health care could be so complicated.” I hope that didn’t shake him up too much, just before his big speech. You know what else is complicated? Stuff. Way more stuff than he has ever realized…
- U.S.-Russia Clash at U.N. Over Syria’s ‘Barbaric’ Weapons — The Kremlin vetoes American-backed resolution to punish Assad’s regime for using chemical weapons. Welcome to the big leagues, Nikki Haley.
- Confederate flag pair jailed over threats to Georgia black family — FYI, they’ve “received lengthy prison sentences” in spite of Georgia not having a hate crimes law. So, take that into consideration.
Related Posts
Quote of the night, on a baseball forum I read… “Trump pointed to the fence… and delivered”.
America vs Canada
http://www.fieldandstream.com/sites/fieldandstream.com/files/styles/large_1x_/public/import/2016/attack2.jpg?itok=D1qFbiYq
Chris Wallace just said tonight Donald Trump just became President. Brit Hume said this was the best most powerful speech he’s ever heard out of 40 of these.
Democrat rebuttal, did they pre-record this last month? Talk about missing on all cylinders… and they had to go to a former governor? Where were all of the high profile Democrats… they seemed to file out of the chamber at record pace. They were out before Trump even stepped down. Even Al Franken was able to get up from his seated slouch.
I think they went to the guy who looked and sounded the most like some guy sitting around a cracker barrel, because they think THAT’S who is mad at them, who they need to reach.
Of course, I always hate “responses.” I see no reason for them. My take on this one:
Damn Brad. You obsess over style issues more than any human being on the planet. The tie reference in particular is offputting. I wore one to work my last day as a sort of a throwback to a bygone era. First time in at least a decade.
He’s addressing the nation, Bud. Despite the extreme efforts to make it look like the camera just happened to come upon him visitin’ with folks in the diner, we all know that’s not the case.
It’s not that it didn’t occur to him to put on a tie. A deliberate decision was made NOT to wear a tie. All part of the folksy hokum.
Very phony.
As I’ve indicated in the past, I dislike phony folksiness. Only think I can say for this guy is that he’s not a bogus as Edwards. But the contrived setting was really, really off-putting.
I don’t like populism to begin with. I really don’t like it when it’s calculated. This was like, “Man, we coastal elites got our clocks cleaned. We’d better resort to the Li’l Abner routine…”
Once again, and I know I’m beating my head against a hard wall, but you are agitating over style. It is not important what he wore. Frankly I found the no tie look LESS phony. People in the real world don’t routinely wear ties anymore.
Maybe so, but I don’t vote for those people. They need to show me they WANT my vote…
So you would vote for a person who wants a smaller military budget, full repeal of the ACA is pro-choice and in general is a libertarian because he wears a tie over a full blown communitarian, big military, single payer candidate who eschews ties? Let’s further assume tie guy has a shady history and no tie guy is a model family man. Somehow I believe Brad just might.
You know the whole tie thing was tongue-in-cheek, right?
Actually Brian I think Brad is serious. I’ve followed his writings for many years and I find it plausible that Brad REALLY was bothered bigly by the lack of a tie.
I was serious that if a guy who normally wears a tie presents himself to me without one as a stratagem, based in his belief that he will somehow connect better by appearing to be a casual man-of-the-people, it makes me want to hurl.
Also…
In my adult life, politicians have mostly presented themselves to me as candidates in the context of editorial board meetings.
Only a couple of male candidates ever came in dressed casually. If they did, it was a clear sign of disrespect. The incident that sticks out most clearly in my mind was the Libertarian who came in wearing shorts. Obviously, we didn’t endorse him, since he was a Libertarian. But the shorts didn’t help, either.
To put it in Bryan terms — the editorial board room was my courtroom, and I expected those practicing in it to wear a suit, made from some sort of CLOTH…
To elaborate…
In the last years of Knight Ridder, the corporation moved its headquarters from Miami to San Jose. Which I thought was ridiculous — like “Look at us; we moved to Silicon Valley! We’re hip, we’re happening!”
After that move, whenever corporate execs came to visit us, they came tieless. So there we’d be, dressed like grownups, sitting with faux Californians looking like they thought they were at a cookout.
And yeah, I was offended. I felt they were dissing us. It wasn’t a big deal, but it wasn’t a positive factor in the relationship.
Fortunately, I never had to deal with corporate much…
About to run to a meeting, but at some point, remind me to tell you the story about the time I didn’t wear a tie to court in Charleston.
No tie in a Charleston courtroom?
Might as well go to church naked.
So here’s the story:
I had to go to Charleston for a foreclosure case I was handling on a pro bono basis as essentially a favor to a friend. It was fairly routine, but there was one issue that was in dispute, so we needed a hearing. For foreclosures, you end up in front of the Master-in-Equity, which is a judge like a circuit court judge, but he handles all the cases without a jury. In Charleston, the MIE is Judge Scarborough. He’s a super nice guy and is pretty easygoing compared to other judges. So I’m driving to Charleston for a hearing that’s set for 9:30AM. Accordingly, to get to Charleston and actually be in court then, I’ve left pretty early from Columbia.
So I’m drinking my coffee on the way down, and right when I get off I-26 to get on Meeting Street, the car in front of me abruptly stops, and I have to stop really fast, making me spill all of my coffee down my front. I’m soaked, and my really nice light pink tie has caught the brunt of the spill. It’s soaked, brown, and awful. It was like I dipped my tie in coffee, and I have no time to go and get a replacement. (It’s sort of like the scene in My Cousin Vinny where he gets mud on his suit, but in this case, it was just my tie.)
So I’m faced with the decision to just go in with this horrible, wet (now brown) tie, or just go with no tie. Neither decision is good, but I decided to go in with no tie and then explain. I figure that I could explain that right off the bat and everything would be mostly okay.
I get into the Courtroom and we’re all waiting on Judge Scarborough to come in. He comes in, we stand up, and as he takes his seat, I’m about to start explaining my lack of tie in a pre-emptive strike, but he looks at me like I’m an insane person and says “Mr. Caskey, where is your tie?”
So I explain to him the whole coffee thing, and he sits there quietly thinking for a minute, then says with a grin (knowing that I’m doing this case for free), “Well, Mr. Caskey I would tell you that Ben Silver (a nice men’s shop) is right across the street, but from the looks of this case, your client hasn’t paid you enough money for you to afford a Ben Silver tie. So I guess you’re off the hook this time.”
We then got into the merits of the case, and he ruled in my favor. I have since traveled with a back-up tie.
The dems have made healthcare their marquee issue. The former KY governor showed how well the ACA could work even in a red state. The GOP is clearly on its heels with their atrocious scheme to basically kill people by denying them health insurance. It’s a sound strategy that seems to be working. Republicans everywhere are in a panic. Let’s hope this cost them at the polls. This miserable cadre of despicables must be defeated while we still have a country.
bud, as a former state employee you don’t see what Obamacare has done to those who aren’t on a government health plan and don’t qualify for subsidies. I know people who’s monthly premiums have tripled to around $1500/month for a family plan, their deductible in the $6000 range, and the maximum out of pocket in the $10,000 range. To total this up, that’s $18,000 for premiums + $6,0000 deductible = $24,000 before their insurance forks over a dime. These are people who make approximately $70,000 and a family of five. Now if they were to quit working, they’d get free health care. Who’s being denied health care now?
Republicans aren’t in a panic, it’s the Democrats who are in a panic… did you see them scurry out of the House camber last night… you’d think someone yelled “fire”.
“This miserable cadre of despicables must be defeated while we still have a country.”
We prefer the term, “deplorables”.
And if that hypothetical 5 person family has a terrible accident or disease that can run into 6 figures or more they will be grateful for the ACA that allowed them to keep their house and dignity. Pre ACA this family’s crappy policy would likely have an annual cap that would amount to $100s of thousands in personal liability. Sure the ACA has issues but it is an excellent start that is helping millions. And Republicans are getting nervous that repeal will unleash the wrath of newly uninsured.
So my response of factual information gets rejected, yet bud’s hypothetical (not even close) goes through. This blog is a joke.
What response was that?
The one asking bud if he’s okay with paying 30% of his gross income for health insurance.
Since bud’s on the state plan he likely is on the $99/month BC&BS plan (he’s retired but gets post-retirement medical) and doesn’t have a clue as to what non-state employees pay. Unless he grosses less than $300/month he doesn’t have any experience in what I’m talking about.
Yeah, I didn’t allow that one because it was more about Bud and how clueless he supposedly is instead of about the aforementioned facts.
I’m allowing it here so that I can answer you this way but no other way, because you don’t use a valid email address on your comments.
Why is that, by the way?
I don’t know why anything I wrote wouldn’t be allowable, insurance premiums for state employees are listed on the internet. He seems to find no issue with people having to pay 1/3 of their income to pay for health coverage.
Why… do you need to e-mail me? Do I need a valid e-mail account so in case your site gets hacked I get even more spam messages than I currently do? I could create a Gmail account that I’ll never check if you do.
Well, for one thing, when I don’t allow someone’s comment, I can explain why if I think an explanation’s warranted.
As I did once with Bud last week, as a matter of fact — on a comment that YOU complained about. Since I killed his comment, I couldn’t explain in a reply to it — so, email.
Anyway, while I prefer people to use their real names, I’m pretty tolerant about letting folks comment anonymously if they feel they must. But when you not only make it impossible for me to know who you are (I know most people who use pseudonyms here, even though they remain unknown to others), but use a fake email address… Well, I’ve got a problem with that. Seems like bad faith to me…
I’d never use my real name on a public forum. The last thing I need is someone who disagrees with me calling me at 3:00 a.m. to argue their point. There are real nut jobs out there. I also don’t use social media, I don’t care what someone I knew in 3rd grade and haven’t talked to in 40 years is doing today. Likewise I doubt anyone cares what I had for dinner so no tweeting a picture of my plate.
Well, a lot of us enjoy Twitter, and find it very useful.
I follow about 600 feeds, and none of them show me what’s on their plates. But it keeps me really well informed on breaking news, since most of the feeds are media outlets, and the Tweets are essentially headlines linking to the full stories.
I like it for the same reason I liked having the wire services accessible from my desktop all those years in newspapers — only instead of just AP, NYT, Reuters and LAT/WP, I’ve got 600 wires…
600 follows, how do you get anything done… I mean besides stare at your phone all day? That thing must be beeping and flashing all day long.
No, nothing beeps or flashes. It’s just there when I go look at it, with the most recent news at the top.
I generally post several Tweets a day. When I do, I glance to see what’s new…
Have you gone to Domenica yet yourself? It’s been on my bucket list for awhile now. Seems like some great hiking.
Not yet. Don’t know whether we’ll be able to swing it. The Thailand trip really set us back.
If we are going, we’d have to start planning ASAP. She’s only there for a year…
So, the media has nothing… and Trump is a sexist? If Trump said this it’d be blown up on ever network and in every newspaper.
Who is he? I don’t recognize him. Is he also president of the United States? Do we have a co-consul system now? In what way is anything he says or does newsworthy?
These questions might help you understand the difference. Or not…
If you watched the video, Rep. Cedric Richmond D-Lousiana, 2nd District.
Trump wasn’t President when he said what he said, if fact Trump wasn’t even an elected official when he said it. This guy is… and he didn’t say it in private, he said it to a room full of elected officials. As usual, the MSM suddenly went blind and deaf when this video appeared. Do you think the Sunday morning talk shows will bring it up?
If nobody knows what he’s referencing by “1990’s”… he’s referencing Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinski… apparently she was also on her knees in the Oval Office.
Yeah, I got it. Even though it was a super-stupid joke told really badly, I got it.
Cedric Richmond, huh? Never heard of him…
By the way, with regard to that, I just ran across this from last Thursday.
So as usual, when people say, “As usual, the MSM suddenly went blind and deaf when this video appeared,” it’s not true.
It was reported, and just sat there, because it didn’t interest anybody. You’ll note that the headline says “Democratic congressman,” because no one would know who Cedric Richmond is. Which takes me back to my point, which is it’s ridiculous to compare coverage of what a president says to coverage of what a relative nobody says…
Another point — the very first thing I saw about the Kellyanne picture was a piece in The Washington Post saying it was ridiculous that people were making such a fuss about it…