.
Some good news to end this less-than-stellar year, from the Washington Post:
President Obama’s job approval rating is the highest it has been since 2013, according to Gallup.
According to the firm’s three-day tracking, Obama’s approval rate stands at 48 percent, ticking up 3 percentage points since Monday. Respondents were polled from Dec. 27-29. It’s the highest rating Obama has seen since August 2013.
The latest numbers for Obama are part of a weeks-long upward swing in his approval ratings. All were measured this month; during the week of Dec. 21, his approval ratings stood at 45 percent, and they averaged 44 percent for the week ending Dec. 28…
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Apart from preparing for this evening’s celebrations (or not), what’s on the agenda as we wrap up the year?
.
raven
Gonna make a big batch of turkey tasso and smoked cobia!
Mustang Bobby
I’m going to spend the day helping friends prepare for their open house tomorrow by stuffing mushrooms, dates, and a variety of foods; they decided to go all home-made for their servings. What fun!
I’m walking around like Groucho Marx’s stand-in today; I spent almost two hours yesterday afternoon pressure-cleaning the back patio, getting a year’s worth of crud and dirt off the concrete. Hey, it’s painted a light beige…
raven
@Mustang Bobby: We have friends that have a really nice party every year but the damn Bulldogs have been in noon or 1pm bowls for the last 5 years and I always sneak out. This year we whupped Lville last night so I can stay! Yay!!
Steeplejack (phone)
I have an invite, but I’m going to stay home and sip champagne with the housecat. Been away since Monday.
OzarkHillbilly
I’m almost ready. The wood box is full, the new down comforter is on the bed, and I won’t set the alarm clock when I go to bed between 8 and 9. Oh, I’ll still wake up Thursday morn between 3 and 4, but I won’t be waiting for the alarm clock to tell me it’s time to get up.
raven
@OzarkHillbilly:
TCM
8:00 PM
Elvis on Tour (1972)
9:45 PM
Hard Day’s Night, A (1964)
11:17 PM
Background Beat, The (1965)
11:30 PM
Gimme Shelter
1:15 AM
Tommy (1975)
3:15 AM
Jimi Hendrix (1973)
Mustang Bobby
@raven: I have no dogs in any fights tomorrow, so I will enjoy the party all the way through. Glad your team won.
I’m glad I’m not in Denver this morning: it’s -7 F.
raven
@Steeplejack (phone): We are such dead-asses that we don’t even get invitations anymore!
raven
@Mustang Bobby: Oh the final four games at 4 and 8 will be great but this is a daytime gig!
raven
Steeplejack (phone)
@raven:
But she had a concealed-carry permit, so it’s all good.
BillinGlendaleCA
@raven: Us either; will just be me and the wifey, a shrimp platter, boozey stuff for her and sparking grape juice for me.
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: From the Guardian article:
The victim’s father-in-law, Terry Rutledge, told Associated Press that she “was a beautiful, young, loving mother.”
“She was not the least bit irresponsible,” he said. “She was taken much too soon.”
Oh sure… I always leave loaded guns laying around the house for my granddaughter to play with when she comes over,
BillinGlendaleCA
I enabled the usb entry for the touchscreen in VirtualBox, works much better, doh!
Lurking Canadian
@raven: My God that poor kid. I saw this last night, but didn’t realize the victim was his own mother. He’ll never get past that.
ThresherK
First Night in Boston with friends, so I can relax and let things happen as they may. I won’t have to navigate, drive, schedule, make appointments, or be responsible for anyone else’s good time.
It is just what I need after a year of feeling everything depended on my incredible powers of attention to detail and concentration.
And when we get back, the box of cable company goodness awaits so we can have modern communication in the home.
Steeplejack (phone)
@BillinGlendaleCA:
See, I told you! Or at least vaguely alluded to something in the general vicinity.
Phylllis
Greek pizza, cheese & crackers, and a bottle of bubbly here at home with football on the telly. We might make it to 9:30 p.m.
Sherparick
As James Carville famously said “It is the economy, stupid.” When the economy starts feeling good to people (and house prices rise), any President is a genius; when times are hard and gas prices rise, then he (or she) is an idiot.
Speaking of stupid, it is amazing to contemplate the gargantuan amount of paranoia and idiotic memes propagated by grifters of the NRA and Right-Wing noise machine over the last 30 years that would cause a 29-year old woman living in small town Idaho to think that she needed to carry a concealed pistol around with her for her “safety” because the Kenyan Usurper could be sending New Black Panther Party thugs at any moment to force her to sign up for Obamacare and take away her “Freedoms.” Although she sounded like a nice person, and I bet her house was “child proof” so her two year old could not get his hands on dangerous products, all the stupid memes the woman had picked up over the 29 years of her life got her killed because she could no longer think it through that carrying a loaded pistol within reach of said child had tragically foreseeable consequences (or for that matter, neither can her friends and relatives who seem to be reacting to this situation as an “Act of God.”) All the idiots who voted in Idaho for “concealed carry” and “open carry” (except when Black) in the Idaho state legislature have this blood on their hands, but the grifters even more so.
Gin & Tonic
@Lurking Canadian: The kid is two. He will have no memory of this.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Sherparick: It’s the Idaho Panhandle, Jake.
Lurking Canadian
@Gin & Tonic: I would agree, except that it was HIS mother. You don’t think he’s eventually going to start asking why he doesn’t have a Mommy like the other kids at the park? They could lie to him, I suppose, but eventually, he’ll discover Google.
dr. luba
@Gin & Tonic: He may have no direct memory, but he will learn of it at some point and have to deal with it.
Baud
I’m going nowhere because I’m still sick. Hopefully, there will be enough Juicers with no life to keep me company.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
While I feel sad for the family, I’m glad the kid didn’t kill a bystander in Walmart.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: We’re here for ya. Well, I will be for the next 10 minutes or so.
debbie
@Lurking Canadian:
He’s also got siblings. He’ll know.
BillinGlendaleCA
Temp is 44.4 outside, very unlucky number in Asian cultures.
debbie
So if I decide to make lucky food for the New Year, do I make it on New Year’s Eve or on New Year’s Day?
Baud
@BillinGlendaleCA
If you really are out for the rest of the day, have a good new years, Bill.
MomSense
@Baud:
My foot is still fricked so I’ll be here.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: Nah, I’m just going to sleep, it’s 5:10am here. I’ll be back in a few hours.
I’ve just been spending my evening(morning) playing with my new monitor(Acer 23″ touchscreen).
Baud
@MomSense:
Yay.
@BillinGlendaleCA:
Cool. Christmas gift?
Gin & Tonic
@dr. luba: Good. Maybe it will be one less gun owner.
I guess I’m a pathetic excuse for a human being, but I’m having a very hard time working up any sympathy here.
Phylllis
@Sherparick: When we were in DC in July, security at the Air & Space museum had their hands full with the woman behind me who had a locked & loaded pistol at the bottom of her canvas tote bag full of crap. Never mind that she’d passed three different signs indicating no weapons. And wanted to be all put out when they wouldn’t keep her gun for her so she could go through the museum with her family. And didn’t like the fact that they recommended she not take a taxi or the metro back to her hotel to put it away, since DC does not allow concealed carry.
Yes, a locked & loaded weapon at the bottom of a huge tote bag covered with all the rest of your crap. I’m sure the bad man will wait while you dig around in that thing to find your protection.
NotMax
Popped awake at 3:15 a.m., which really, really didn’t want to happen as need to be non-logy Wed. to do cooking for the evening gathering. Perhaps will be able to get to sleep by 5-ish and get some more shuteye by 9 or 10 in the morning, which would just give me enough time.
Also realized don’t have any tarragon leaves in the house (one recipe calls for those) so going in another direction so far as a spice accent is concerned for that one. Finely chopped spinach and some basil, tossed with a dash or three of hot sauce, will have to give both the green flecks and tang instead. Darned if I’m gong to the stores any more this week for anything; five hours shopping on Monday exceeded my shopping patience quota.
Tenar Darell
@Lurking Canadian: I feel bad for the kid, and I feel bad for those that witnessed this, and I feel like throttling the mother (and other parent) who obviously were risking the lives of everyone around them by not knowing how to properly secure their weapons around children.
@Gin & Tonic: @debbie: Memories are reinforced by trauma and strong emotions. I even have one or two left from before I was 3 because my brother was born then and my mother went to the hospital. I’m pretty sure he’ll remember something. And like Debbie said unless the kid’s an only with no contact with the rest of his family and they move away from that community, I don’t believe that someone won’t reinforce it. He’ll know.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Phylllis:
and nothing in the bag is going to catch the trigger.
This all really bizarre to me since I was taught gun safety by ex-military guys who would have a quite rightful ragegasm if they caught someone doing something that stupid with a gun. Heck, back in the Wild West the cowboys left one cylinder unloaded and lined up with the barrel, just so they wouldn’t shoot themselves by accident. Yet, all these Open Carry clowns treat guns like they are some kind of cell phone and not a dangerous weapon.
Violet
@Tenar Darell: It’ll be a taunt from a bully. He’ll know. “Hey mom murderer. Killed your dad yet?”
Gin & Tonic
@Tenar Darell: He’ll know
So? Look, I’m sorry his mother was a moron, but maybe he should know. This was not a “tragic accident”, this was a statistical inevitability. I want to see people laying this at Wayne Lapierre’s feet just as Patrick Lynch attempts to lay the blood of Ramos and Liu on deBlasio. I want to see the phrase “responsible gun owner” banished from this case — if she were responsible, she’d be alive. I want to see the three nieces so shaken by this that they scream every time one of their relatives takes a gun out. This is the America we have now, unfortunately, when a grown and educated woman feels the need to pack heat in her purse to take the kids shopping at Wal-Mart in fucking East Armpit.
Violet
@Gin & Tonic: It’s tragic for the kid who at two was too young to know what he was doing. It’s also tragic for any siblings who lost their mom. As for the adults it’s a preventable accident and yes the BRA and Wayne La Pierre should be blamed.
danielx
Brrrr….10 degrees outside this morning, going up to 22; No wonder it felt chilly when I came downstairs. MOAR FIREWOOD!
Staying home per usual and will no doubt be in bed by 12:30, always presuming I haven’t fallen into a food coma before that. Used to be that we’d spend New Year’s with friends at their house, did that for four-five years before they moved out of town. Always a good time except for that part about everybody in their neighborhood wanting to celebrate at midnight by discharging their firearms in the air, sounded like the fucking Tet Offensive for a half hour or longer. I’ve never been able to understand how people can fail to grasp the simple concept of what goes up must invariably come down….somewhere.
danielx
@Tenar Darell:
Happens all the time, even with people who are supposedly trained. There’s a local police chief who is semi-notorious for shooting himself twice, the second time during his campaign for county sheriff. Trying to put a Glock back in a holster, got it hung up on one of those little plastic doohickeys on the bottom hem of a fleece jacket.
Maybe if such incidents were called “preventable discharges” instead of “accidents”…
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Violet: This.
It’s not whether he knows, or how much he remembers, but how the people around him will act.
You see it all the time in adoptees in my cohort and older. The kids whose immediate family and social circle treated it like no big deal are generally pretty well adjusted. The ones who acted like it was a blot on the kid’s soul caused a lot of heartache for the kid.
NotMax
@danielx
One fellow* at the New Year’s gathering always brings along his homemade harquebus and a supply of black powder. (No projectile, merely for the effect of the loud boom and shower of sparks.)
One year he set off a triple charge in the yard behind the house where the event was being held. The report was so loud it set off a car alarm on the street in front of the house.
Should note he is an ultra-stickler when it comes to firearm safety and always takes extra pains to warn everyone and announce a countdown before setting flame to weapon.
*He makes his own equipment as a hobby, including things such as a complete set of chain mail.
PurpleGirl
Don’t any specific plans for today or tonight. I’ll hang out here, watch the kitten cams a bit.
ETA: Like the cartoon… A plot twist is nigh. Great line.
Tenar Darell
@Gin & Tonic: I understand why you feel that way.
I’m of the opinion that every mouth breathing 2nd amendment absolutist out there thinks they’re immune from being human, that “they would never be so stupid” needs a swift nose rubbing in their sh*t and a reminder that NO ONE is 100% perfect all the time. Certainly kids and guns do not belong together in the same sentence, let alone physical space because they’re not safe. I’m of the opinion that anyone who has a permit or even open carries should be subject to real re-testing and re-qualifying every year, and should lose their weapons if they twitch wrong, etc. etc.
Anyway, I’ve reached a point where every story of a gun owner whose dog ends up shooting him “by accident” slides right off me into gallows humor. Basically I now have a learned zero empathy for that person. But, their victims still get to me. It’s another thing I can lay on the false idols created by LaPierre and the NRA. I hope I don’t end up feeling as you do, but I certainly understand why you feel this way because I can see the beginning of it in myself.
ascap_scab
Who needs Canada when it’s -19 in Fort Bridger, WY this morn? Will be off the road early today so as not to be a target on amatuer night.
scav
Just learned I’ll essentially be the third hand at the liquor store this pm. An opportunity for further rounding — not an area of retail I’ve wandered through. yet.
Mnemosyne (iPad Mini)
Our usual NYE celebration — G works until 8 pm or later, then we have dinner at home and watch a movie. I’ll wake him up at midnight for our New Year’s kiss. Tomorrow I’m making a chocolate chip Dutch baby for breakfast (damn you, “Bob’s Burgers”!) and then we’ll watch the Rose Parade in our jammies. All around, a nice, relaxing Eve and Day. His boss bought him a monster bottle of prosecco that there is no way we’ll finish. So not only is she driving him to drink at the office, she’s actually encouraging it.
I have a few things to do around the apartment today — including building a new piece of furniture that arrived yesterday — but first I have to wait for Queen Charlotte to finish her nap in my lap. I haven’t even been allowed to have breakfast yet.