Drive-up liquor stores? Bad idea. At least they don’t sell mixed cocktails in a cup. There was a place in my hometown that had a drive-in window bar until the mid-80s.
What else is a bad idea? Open thread!
by Betty Cracker| 179 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads
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Mike in NC
Have not been there in years, but out on islands of the NC Outer Banks there was a chain of drive-through liquor stores called “Brew Thru”.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
In the late 80s, Flagstaff Arizona had a drive through liquor and guns store. No lie!
Chris
As someone who still does a lot of walking to get around places: bridges without sidewalks.
(A minor first world problem, but still).
RepubAnon
I hear Louisiana has drive-through windows serving daiquiris: https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2015/06/all-hail-the-drive-through-daiquiri.html
This may explain how Bobby Jindal got elected…
H.K. Anders
There are drive-thru daiquiri shops in Louisiana to this day.
Chris
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:
It says a lot about the United States of America that I’m more surprised by the drive-thru liquor than the drive-thru guns.
amk
TP Logo?
cmorenc
A drone-mounted chainsaw.
Hunter Gathers
Kids. They’re awful. Why do we keep having them?
Corner Stone
Speaking of bad ideas – Trump is speaking again. He is choking off trying to read from a literal script he’s holding in his tiny hand.
Corner Stone
OMG. Trump went from bashing Obama/Clinton on FP to trying to sell the high points for a Pence VP pick.
Zinsky
There is a drive-thru liquor/beer joint in East Phoenix. Good looking clientele driving through there! Yeesh!
Corner Stone
@Hunter Gathers: They are the worst.
Felonius Monk
Betty Cracker: In case you missed it: Drive-thru Daiquiris
Corner Stone
Southern Baptists did their best to make sure there was no liquor available, period. Much less a Sip-N-Go anywhere.
Airmon
The Daiquiri drive throughs in Louisiana will sell by the gallon, too.
Brain freeze and bad decisions, all in one big jug.
Shell
You can open-carry AND open-carry.
Hal
There was a drive up beverage place in my hometown where you could get beer, milk, soda etc. No hard liquor, though.
bago
@Shell: The portmanteau of “freedumb” was created for exactly this purpose.
schrodinger's cat
Republican Party since Reagan has been a repository of bad ideas.
Amir Khalid
In about half an hour, it will turn midnight here in Malaysia and I will officially be 55 years old.
ETA: It will also be the 20th anniversary of the TWA 800 crash and the 2nd anniversary of the MH17 shootdown.
Bill E Pilgrim
Mmmmmmm. Drone-mounted daiquiris.
schrodinger's cat
@Amir Khalid: You are a spring chicken by Balloon Juice standards!
Happy Birthday!!
How is the pinky finger?
bago
Apparently there’s not enough religion in politics, according to the trump.
CaseyL
Is Trader Vic’s still around in S. Florida? They used to have a drive-through. When I was a young thing, we’d stop at one and load up before a road trip. Seems kind of surreal in retrospect.
More recent Bad Idea story:
While hiking in the Olympic Peninsula with some friends, we came across a very old, very large, very dead and rotted tree trunk lying on its side. The trail kind of dipped around the tree: You had to clamber over it and then jump down a few feet. About midway a huge hole had formed all the way through the trunk, big enough to climb into.
I thought it would be fun to see if I could drop through the hole onto the trail.
It looked doable. To me, anyway. My friends thought it wasn’t a great idea. They said so. They said, “You’re going into the Cave of the Very Bad Idea.”
Being not entirely stupid, I slowly lowered myself in. And “slow” was a good thing, because a previously unnoticed interior bit of wood jabbed me right in the tailbone – much to the merriment of my friends.
So I hoisted myself out, only slightly bruised, and we continued on.
But forever afterward, whenever one of us had an idea that could be dumb or dangerous or both, we were “going into the Cave of the Very Bad Idea.”
@Amir Khalid: Happy Birthday!
japa21
@Amir Khalid: Happy birthday in 28 minutes.
hovercraft
@Corner Stone:
As usual it’s a rambling mishmash of incoherence. The Johnson rule, bringing back coal mining jobs, Hillary is very weak.
eldorado
late 80’s in new mexico, a friend took me to one of these. i don’t remember if you could get a mixed drink though. what i do remember is passing by a local catholic church/retreat and him telling me that’s where they sent the molesters who got caught. didn’t believe him at the time…
Baud
@Amir Khalid:
Happy birthday. And thanks for the warning never to fly on July 17.
Helen
Trump keeps forgetting why he’s there.
Gindy51
Along I74 right before you get to Indiana, there is a drive through liquor store. Does big business on Sunday since you can’t buy bottled or canned alcohol in Indiana on that day (and several really stupid holidays as well). You can buy wine at a winery and growers full of beer at a brewery.
Peking Man
Since our Aussie friends may be sleeping, I will add that drive through liquor stores are quite common there. At least in the NT
Feathers
Did anyone else have the poetry collection Beastly Boys and Ghastly Girls as a child? Filled with lots and lots of bad ideas. Loved it. Loved it. Surprised, not surprised that it is out of print.
“Nothing to do?”
Nothing to do? Nothing to do?
Put some mustard in your shoe,
Fill your pockets full of soot,
Drive a nail into your foot,
Put some sugar in your hair,
Place your toys upon the stair,
Smear some jelly on the latch,
Eat some mud and strike a match,
Draw a picture on the wall,
Roll some marbles down the hall,
Pour some ink in Daddy’s cap—
Now go upstairs and take a nap.
by Shelley Silverstein
Corner Stone
I had changed it to watching The Open but thought I’d check back in with Trump. Add that to the list of bad ideas.
Mustang Bobby
Apparently there’s such a thing as a solar-powered flashlight. I assume the panels are used to charge the battery, but it still seems like an oxymoron.
Amir Khalid
@schrodinger’s cat:
The pinky finger’s still here. It won’t bend anymore; but I’ve been told it won’t need to be amputated after all, since that’s not done with gout.
Major Major Major Major
The proliferation of vegan cookies, to the exclusion of ingrediotypical cookies, in the grocery stores near me is a bad idea. Sometimes a guy just wants an impulse buy that doesn’t taste like sand.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Mustang Bobby:
Not really any more than food-powered beef cattle are.
Quinerly
@schrodinger’s cat:
“The Republican Party since Reagan has been the suppository of bad ideas.” Fixed it for you. No thanks needed.
kindness
Back in the 70’s my brother was going to college in NH. You could drive with an open container there then but if you were stopped you had to submit to sobriety testing if requested by a cop. Which seems fair except the whole driving while drinking thingy.
Amir Khalid
@Mustang Bobby:
Or maybe it’s a poorly designed product that only works in direct sunlight …
Baud
@Amir Khalid: It won’t bend at all? It’s completely strait?
At least you’ll look awesome sipping tea.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Helen:
Exactly my thought.
I turned on both MSNBC and CNN and all there was was his speech so I watched a few minutes, and I was thinking good lord he can’t stop being a transparent huckster even for a moment. And it’s not even directed at getting elected, he just falls into bragging mode for its own sake.
The fact that he’s polling more than 2% is a sad commentary on the intelligence of this country, I gotta say. He’ll probably get demolished in the election but it really shouldn’t be this close.
Johnnybuck
Yeah but that sign is wicked cool!
The Thin Black Duke
@schrodinger’s cat: The rot began with Nixon.
burnspbesq
Bad ideas?
Sequels, as a general rule.
Remakes.
Electrostatic headphones (sure, I want 640 volts on my head)
Head-up displays in cars
The “shooting space” rule in women’s lacrosse
Rod Stewart defiling the Great American Songbook
Donald Trump
hovercraft
Mike Pence thanks the Donald and his family for the sacrifice they are making for America. Donald understands the American people like no one since Ronald Reagan. He is very energy, and pretty boring.
BD of MN
The wife and I have put on almost 2500 miles driving on vacation this past week, I wish this would have come out before we left…
Davebo
I just don’t see the problem with drive through liquor or beer stores. The vast majority will be driving to the liquor store, what difference does it make if they have to get out of the car or not?
I suppose I can see that the optics are a problem but in reality worrying about that is sort of silly.
Amir Khalid
@Baud:
It does bend, but only a bit. And the middle joint is swollen so it doesn’t look pretty.
debbie
@Corner Stone:
I wasn’t able to listen to him for more than 15 minutes. The constant sniffing: Did Stone need to coke him up to accept Pence?
Of the 15 minutes, he mentioned Pence maybe 3 times; the balance, of course, was on his own excellency.
wenchacha
@Feathers: I loved that book as a child! Still do.
Mike E
@Mike in NC: I was floored to discover you could get a tallboy in a paper bag at the local fill up station, right when I arrived in NC 28 years ago.
hovercraft
@Amir Khalid:
Happy birthday to ya.
debbie
@Amir Khalid:
I’m sorry this is still bothering you. If it’s gout, did they give you anything to take for it? I’ve got a few family members with gout and whatever they’re taking, it’s stopped the attacks.
Corner Stone
@burnspbesq:
I recently rented a car and due to a mistake on the rental company’s part I eventually ended up with a new Denali. It was a real beast, and it also had a HUD. I didn’t really use it as a focus point but it was helpful while I had it.
GregB
@kindness:
That law was on the books until the early 1980’s.
Corner Stone
Welp, Tweety loved the TrumpPence speech. Guess we’re screwed then.
burnspbesq
A few more bad ideas
Foreign Secretary Boorish Johnson
Open carry (but the Open Carry Dildo protest scheduled for the first day of classes at UT Austin is sheer genius)
Football in general, and SEC football in particular
Sevens rugby and T20 cricket
Open primaries
Anything having to do with Ayn Rand
Chris
@The Thin Black Duke:
I would argue it’s been on a downward spiral since Grant or Hayes.
Grant for the “Republican Party as mouthpiece of Wall Street” thing, Hayes meaning the Tilden-Hayes compromise of “we’ll pull the troops out of the South if you give us the White House” – which is to say, by extension, “you leave us in charge at the national level and we’ll turn a blind eye while you rebuild the South to pre-Civil-War specifications.” The original alliance between Northern wealth and Southern racism, foreshadowing the Conservative Coalition of the late thirties, the Southern Strategy of the late sixties, and the GOP as it exists today.
It’s just that you don’t notice the downward spiral as much when you go that far back, because the Democrats were still worse for an awfully long time.
Major Major Major Major
@burnspbesq: @Corner Stone: Yeah, aren’t they better than dashboards/GPS/smartphones because at least you don’t have to look away from the road?
Including, but not limited to, Megan McArdle.
Hildebrand
Not a bad idea per se, but the placement was perhaps less than perfect – right next door to the Wings, Etc bar/restaurant in Mishawaka, IN, was a Wild Birds Unlimited store, with bird feeders out front. Seemed to be tempting fate.
Amir Khalid
@debbie:
Just the usual allopurinol.
max
Drive-up liquor stores? Bad idea.
Beer Barn. Drive in and they’ll jump on a hay bale and throw a case or three of beer, or maybe a keg into the back of your truck.
As these things go, it’s a minor minor problem compared to electing Ronald Reagan, a 2% inflation ceiling, the Patriot Act, invading Iraq, getting anything other than toe deep into the Middle East, the Euro, Hollywood reboots, semi-automatic handguns, Antonio Scalia, the Cloud, Facebook, Twitter, MFN/WTO status for China, white Christian academies … there’s such wealth of stupid ideas to choose from that Drive-thru beer stores seem positively sensible.
max
[‘This turn to upmarket corporate neo-Victorianism is kind of making me gag.’]
burnspbesq
@Major Major Major Major:
I found it to be a distraction, and turned it off at the first traffic light after I exited the rental car center. YMMV.
Major Major Major Major
@max:
You misspelled “get off my lawn.”
Corner Stone
Steve Schmidt fairly panning the Trump campaign and it’s lack of any competent or knowledgeable staff.
Josie
@Baud:
I had the exact same thought, but then I realized I didn’t know Amir well enough to make the joke. ; )
@Amir Khalid: Happy Birthday, youngster. Hope the pinky finger gets better over timel
Corner Stone
@Major Major Major Major: That’s how I used it. The onboard GPS display in the console was very distracting and not as helpful as other GPS systems I have used. The HUD started signaling when a turn or change was upcoming, flashed approx distance and then the arrow changed colors when you were really close.
I got lost coming out of the airport when using the GPS in the console. Then turned on the HUD and was pretty ok with it.
Josie
@Josie: augh. FYWP won’t let me edit the smiley face or the letter after time..
dr. luba
@Peking Man: Throughout Australia. And you drive into the store itself, not up to a window. The staff are happy to load cases of whatever into your vehicle.
burnspbesq
Berniacs coming all over my FB feed at news of a Sanders – Stein powwow.
OldDave
@burnspbesq:
Yeah, but they sounded so darn good…
Major Major Major Major
@burnspbesq: moi aussi.
Josie
@Corner Stone: I’m not surprised. Tweety’s brain processes information in a similarly disorganized fashion as Trump’s.
MomSense
@Amir Khalid:
Happy birthday, Amir!!
burnspbesq
@OldDave:
They should, for what they cost. $5,250 for Stax SR-009? Ummm, don’t think so.
Vheidi
@Amir Khalid: Happy birthday! Did you ever notice how many awesome people were born in 1961? You, me, oh yeah, that Obama dude. I know I’m forgetting a few, but it’s hard to top that last one.
Cat48
Planned Parenthood did the final fix on the Trump Pence logo. They added a condom, as seen on Twitter. Trump Pence has a new logo that doesn’t touch anywhere. :)
Emma
@Amir Khalid: Happy birthday, younger brother!
TriassicSands
Bad ideas?
Electing people who hate government to run the government.
Driverless cars that require the driver to remain alert and keep his/her hands on or near the wheel at all times to take over “just in case.”
Cell phones in cars.
Eliminating jobs through automation when there is no plan to create substitute jobs.
hovercraft
@Bill E Pilgrim:
So Tweety thought the presentation of both speakers was a barn burner, the vp candidate calling Donald a builder bodes well for the fall campaign. Steve Schmidt brought it back to reality, saying that they need real speech writers and an actual message for the general audience not the primary voters. He described Donalds speech as stream of conscience ramble.
Tweety really has a crush.
Corner Stone
Pence sounds like a dumber Palin. His intonation is stilted and off patter. Like a robot trying to imitate Yosemite Sarah.
burnspbesq
@Cat48:
And there’s this:
The Trump Condom
raven
How about the idiot local NBC station blocking the view of the hole with their dumb ass scroll !
jacy
@Amir Khalid:
Many happy returns!
When I was in high school, there was a drive-in liquor store in Manitou Springs. Of course, dinosaurs roamed the earth back then.
In Louisiana, you can’t throw a stick without hitting a drive-through daquiri shop. We were at one last weekend stocking up for our GoT marathon. What’s more, they’ll give you unlimited daquiri samples in little cups, WHILE YOU’RE DRIVING THROUGH. We sampled about eight different flavors. (Don’t worry, someone adultier than me was driving….)
RobertDSC-Quad Intel Mac
A bad idea:
Bernie Sanders being allowed to speak at the convention. I think he’ll pull a Chris Christie and talk about himself rather than Hillary.
hovercraft
@Corner Stone:
Schmidt does not sound impressed, he feels he needs a lot of work before he gets up to give his speech at the convention, and before the debate. If Donald was looking for someone low key who will never outshine him, ha has found his low energy man.
TriassicSands
@bago:
Yeah, ‘cuz Trump is such a religious person.
Two things (out of many) that Trump knows nothing about — government/governing and religion/being a good person.
Three things Trump knows lots about — suing people, bankruptcy and marital infidelity.
gene108
@Amir Khalid
Happy Birthday!!!!!!
***************************
I don’t know if this is a good idea or bad idea: booze delivery. It works like pizza delivery, place your order and minutes later someone comes to your door with booze.
On the one hand, you are at a party and running low on booze. Place your order and the booze gets delivered and the party goes on.
On the other hand, you are at a party and running low on booze. Place your order and booze gets delivered, but since you’ve been partying hard all night you should dial it back before getting alcohol poisoning.
Bess
@Mustang Bobby:
Solar powered flashlights and (more importantly) solar powered lanterns are making a huge difference for people who live in places where grid power is not available. A solar lantern can be purchased for less than what people would normally spend in a month for kerosene and candles for lighting.
The quality of light is hugely superior to a kerosene lamp or candle. There’s none of the fumes of burning kerosene (and they are really bad). Better light and better health.
Solar powered flashlights and lanterns make for a low entry point to electrification who have no grid access and probably couldn’t pay for hooking up were it available in their area.
The next step up is “micro-solar”. A very basic solar system that can run a few LEDs and charge a cell phone. There are programs that allow people to purchase on time and pay the system off in a year or so with payments less than what they would have spent on kero and candles. There are now over 3 million of these systems installed in Bangladesh and programs running around the world.
raven
@Amir Khalid: Happy Birthday, my sis is 65 today!
hovercraft
@RobertDSC-Quad Intel Mac:
Which is probably why he’s on Monday night. Michelle will also be on to pull part of the focus off of him. Since he was a primary rival and he has now endorsed her, it would be surly of her to not allow him to speak, and it would piss off his supporters, I know most of them have already come on board. This will make her look like the better person, especially if he focuses on himself.
Amir Khalid
@RobertDSC-Quad Intel Mac:
I do hope the DNC gets to see his speech well ahead of delivery, so that they can yank him if he wants to say anything that screws things up for the party. I think he’s made a fool of himself already, by putting Cornel West on the platform committee. West, that grandstanding fool, has only gone and endorsed Jill Stein.
Bess
@Amir Khalid:
Happy birthday, young man.
How does one get gout in their finger? Do you sleep with your hand dangling over the side of the bed? Typically uric acid crystals concentrate in feet and lower extremity joints. Down hill.
Allopurinol causes the body to produce less uric acid, thus fewer crystals to make life a pain.
Major Major Major Major
@RobertDSC-Quad Intel Mac: tent, pissing, etc.
Doug R
Cars with digital displays that are always lit AND daytime running lights. Idiots around here don’t realize when the sun goes down that their taillights aren’t lit. Don’t know how many rear end collisions that’s caused.
Olivia
In the 70s there were attempts to process cow shit into feed for cows. I lived in the same building as a scientist who was working on it. Not sure how it all ended up, but it’s possible that mad cow disease might have put an end to that idea.
muddy
@Amir Khalid: Happy Birthday to you! I have been meaning to tell you about my experience with cherry juice. I’m not sure what is available where you are, I get this kind. Anyway I had gout in several toes and the allopurinol did not agree with me. My pharmacist told me about tart cherry juice – I believe black cherry juice does the same but I don’t care for that. I’ve not had the gout reoccur since I have been having the cherry juice daily. It also makes a nice popsicle.
ThresherK (GPad)
@burnspbesq: Rod Stewart has reached the point where he can do a vanity project or three, but it’s not a good fit for him. I’d like someone who had his ear to tell him ‘no’.
Amir Khalid
@Bess:
I’ve been told you can get it behind your ears. And one’s hands do hang down when one is standing up.
Amir Khalid
@muddy:
We do have supermarkets here in Malaysia, so I might give that tart cherry juice a try.
muddy
@Mustang Bobby: @Bess: I have some of the BOGO lights, and have given them as gifts. The ones I have are pretty old by now but still work just fine. I just leave it sitting on a windowsill so it’s charged and I know where it is.
muddy
@Amir Khalid: I know you have supermarkets, I didn’t know if you had cherries!
Major Major Major Major
@Amir Khalid: What day is today,
It’s Amir’s birthday
What a day for a birthday
Let’s all have some cake!
AnotherBruce
It hasn’t happened yet, but flying cars would be a spectacularly bad idea.
? Martin
@gene108: We have that here. I haven’t tried it, but friends love it. The home delivery services are really taking off where I live (not too surprising as an upscale tech community) but the scale has surprised me. Our local market is now 50% delivery shoppers through Amazon Prime Now.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Amir Khalid:
Happy Birthday Amir, you baby you. In a good way.
Kent
Drive through “beverage barns” are everywhere in rural Texas.
As for other bad ideas? My biggest pet peeve are all the 7,000 lb super heavy duty crew cab diesel trucks that people use for daily suburban commuting and never carry more than a bag of groceries.
Origuy
There used to be an organization called Bogo Lights. You would buy one of their solar flashlights and they would send one to a village in the tropics. The intent was to give people light in their huts, shacks, or whatever. They could use them instead of kerosene or firewood for light to do things like read, study, or just socialize. They had a hook on one end so that you could hang them in the sun during the day.
ETA Bess beat me to it while I was trying to find the name.
Corner Stone
Man, just re-watched the compilation of the Obama introducing Biden as VP and the contradictions! They have been heightened!
Keith P.
I used to live a block away from a drive-thru beer/wine store. My next door neighbor worked there, and any time friends would come into town, we’d go into the keg fridge with a tap and play musical kegs, taking rounds off all the good kegs.We would get smashed.
There was another time, a guy was working there who moved a lot of cocaine, and he happened to have a lot of cheap weed that came with a shipment. So I drove in there, gave him some money, and he handed me the tiniest quarter-pound of brickweed I’ve ever seen in my life.
rikyrah
@Amir Khalid:
Happy Birthday ?
muddy
@Origuy: I left a link at #103, do they not sell them anymore?
burnspbesq
I once worked for a liquor store that delivered. Was on a first-name basis with Nixon’s Secret Service detail.
burnspbesq
I assume that by now everyone has seen photos of the University of North Texas coffee mug that turned out to be a bad idea.
AnotherBruce
Iraq.
RobertDSC-Quad Intel Mac
@Amir Khalid:
Wishing you a very happy birthday!
Hal
@hovercraft:
He was talking up what a great choice Pence was on Thursday, also. Should be a fun 4 months.
Redshift
@Vheidi: And me!
Happy birthday, Amir!
JanieM
Bad idea (even if it is a first world problem): Making the scroll bar vanish in Microsoft Word when you’re not directly using it. Ditto any other contexts where the genius (NOT) UI designers have jumped on that bandwagon.
What the fucking fuck..
Mr. Mack
I guess count me among those that don’t see much difference in drive thru window or parking and going in to buy. Bess beat me to (and seems to have a way better handle on it to boot) the solar powered flashlights explanation. If I had to pick one spectacularly bad idea…nuclear power. Sorry, until we have some safe way to dispose of the waste…it’s a ticking time bomb.
Major Major Major Major
@JanieM: I’ve been hating that ‘feature’ on Pages lately.
@Mr. Mack: Well then good news! They’re called Generation IV reactors!
burnspbesq
@JanieM:
Nary a day goes by that I don’t miss WordPerfect 5.1.
Villago Delenda Est
@Amir Khalid: Happy birthday Amir! And many, many more!
Prescott Cactus
Happy Birthday Amir Khalid:ETA: Ravens sister
Partial list
Glock Drones
Seniors driving golf carts on roads
Swamp coolers instead of air conditioners in the 21st century
Nuclear power plants
Mini spare tires
Gas tank fillers on different sides of cars
The penny
Ella in New Mexico
So many things, but a lot of these I had never heard of and made me LOL
http://www.buzzfeed.com/alexfinnis/the-worst-ideas-ever?utm_term=.yxkX5A7Vjy#.gboV0D8zaP” rel=”nofollow”>
Villago Delenda Est
@raven: Happy birthday to your sister!
Villago Delenda Est
Bad Ideas? Two words.
Trump/Pence
EBT
@Mike in NC: there is one in Cullowhee near WCU too.
trollhattan
@Corner Stone:
i.e., The perfect Republican.
Jacel
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: A dozen years ago I was in Sedona, Arizona and saw a liquor and archery supply store with a drive-thru window.
Corner Stone
Only Trump could straight faced claim that a Pence endorsement of Ted Cruz was really an endorsement for He, Trump.
burnspbesq
If there is a deity, Judge Curiel will unseal Trump’s videotaped deposition.
burnspbesq
Trump and reality have no relationship, only a series of drunken hookups.
hovercraft
@Villago Delenda Est:
Where are the surrogates flooding the zone, shouldn’t there be a bunch of people out there telling us what ann inspired pick Pence is, expounding on his record in Indiana and in congress? Even with the one day delay, this entire weekend should be laden with top tier republicans on every show telling us how great the ticket is and how they will destroy crooked Hillary. Instead of offering a photo op, or even afterwards they should have sent the kids out to be interviewed on all the cable channels, since they are going to be the centerpiece of his campaign other than the wall and banning muslims. He’s missing the lay-ups.
hovercraft
@trollhattan:
They seem to breed them extra special in Indiana.
Villago Delenda Est
@hovercraft: He has a severe surrogate problem. The usual suspects who were singing the praises of, say, Sarah Palin, are no where to be seen. This is because we know right now that we’ve got the Sarah Palin we came to know in 2008 at the top of the ticket already, and the surrogates have to think about their futures.
Mr. Mack
@Major Major Major Major: Always up for good news. What are these marvels you hint of?
Oh, and I’m trying to be better at this sort of thing….Happy B-day Amir!
Prescott Cactus
Coupons
Microsoft
The far right
Snow
Paper or plastic; you’re shopping, bring your own reusable bags
8 Track tapesShell
Didnt he have a similar meltdown over Palin?
Uncle Cosmo
@Amir Khalid: Happy birthday. You share it (at 12 years’ remove) with my college girlfriend…who left this plane of existence many years ago. Funny how one remembers odd facts like that… :^(
Major Major Major Major
@Mr. Mack: Generation IV reactors
A lot of people are boosters of the liquid thorium reactor
Personally, I like the pebble bed reactor.
As far as waste disposal, tossing it into a deep, deep, deep hole is actually a pretty good option.
hovercraft
@Shell:
Yes but that was at least with the benefit of good speech writers, even I thought her delivery of republican bullshit was very effective for the uninformed at the convention. When it comes to women who he finds attractive Tweety has a low bar for what is effective campaigning. He is the embodiment of that boss who somehow always thinks that the attractive women are the best employees, just coincidentally.
Today with Pence he was simply projecting his feelings for Donald onto Pence, he thinks that his own love for Trumps success as a builder/businessman is what’s going to win him the election. If you watch his show he keeps saying that Trump has built things and created jobs, whereas what has Hillary ever done. I guess government policy and experience doesn’t count for anything.
Corner Stone
@hovercraft: I’ve been asking that for a while. Besides third rate Republican operatives who are sad enough to need a pay check (maybe) from Trump scampaign, and a small handful of truly RWNJ elected pols, who is a surrogate? What strong voice or presence is out there, loud and proud, for Trump? The two former nominees, nope. The living former R presidents, nope.
McCain won’t even say Trump’s name, just that he’ll vote for the R nominee. And we’ve all seen what Romney has been up to. Ryan and Mitch both obviously despise Trump.
Who is out there? Who I ask, who?
Corner Stone
@hovercraft:
I’ve been fascinated by this. Tweety really seems to think Trump is a builder who creates things, does big things. He has railed a few times that Trump should just get back to “building things” and that would hold him in good stead.
In other words, Tweety is a bigoted, blinded moron.
Major Major Major Major
@hovercraft:
I had one of those. He also applied the corollary, “but any man is better than her.”
MattF
If, for some reason… you missed Trump’s introduction of Mike Pence, Ezra Klein saw it and wrote down what he thought about it.
motopilot
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: I used to work at the hospital, one block away from this drive-in liquor store. Stopped in there a number of times. :-)
jharp
Kentucky used to sell liquor by the glass in the ’80’s.
And a friend of mine back in the late ’70’s took a bottle of Jack Daniels to White Sox game (I think). They stopped him at the gate and said no no. Not bottles allowed.
They then proceeded to dump the contents of the Jack Daniels bottle into a giant cup, hand it to my friend, and let them into the game carrying a Big Gulp size cup of whiskey.
motopilot
I stopped in a bar in Dubois, Wyoming in the late 90’s. As I sat at the bar having a drink the bartender slid open a drive up window, took an order, made a mixed drink in an open glass and handed it through the window to a woman driving a Cadillac. The bartender slid the window closed as this woman drove off sipping her drink. It was surprising to see this in the late 90’s, after drinking and driving had become such an issue.
SiubhanDuinne
@Baud:
Strait of Malacca, I presume.
hovercraft
@Corner Stone:
I definitely think he is sexist, and he seems to me to be overly fixated on immigration, he rants about us not doing anything about border security and enforcement of our immigration laws all the way back to the Reagan amnesty. So he’s sexist and xenophobic, the racism part of the Donald seems to bother him but not to the extent that it should which inclines me to brand him racist tolerant at the very least. His lament seems to be Donald should focus on his building and business experience and just layoff the racist crap and he will have a winning message.
hovercraft
@Major Major Major Major:
But of course he did. Thank dog I no longer work for that asshole.
J R in WV
@Amir Khalid:
Jeez – you’re a mere sprout at 55. And here I’ve been thinking you were an older and wiser guru I should be trying to emulate!!
Drive throughs: In Ohio there are drive through farm stores, a big warehouse sized barn, with feed and seed, hay and fertilizer, fencing and tools, and ice cold beer, all in one stop. You don’t even have to be able to walk, they’ll fill the truck up for you!
Dunno about ammunition, which most feed stores have, we just got some beer and went on home.
Amir: I still respect you, even though you’re a youngster.
You’re a wise youngster compared to most, and way highly educated!
Happy Birthday, and many more, brother!!
Prescott Cactus
@Major Major Major Major: They are building a couple of Gen 3+ down South. Not sure they will ever spin to grid. Way over budget and behind schedule. Unless you have 2 units on one site the economics are very hard. The US will close more plants in next 10 years than that are built.
hovercraft
@MattF:
People need to read that, it gets the essence of the Drump problem/ phenomenon.
Major Major Major Major
@Prescott Cactus: Yeah the gen 2 ones suck and should have been decommissioned a long time ago. Oddly enough, they suck because they were intended to be decommissioned a long time ago. It’s almost like people should pay attention to the spec when they’re dealing with something this important.
If we had the will to move forward with smart nuclear, we’d have a much more promising energy future IMO. Instead we’re just tearing down the whole thing because technology from 50 years ago acts like technology from 50 years ago.
J R in WV
@Amir Khalid: @Mike E:
Recently they stopped carrying a normal 16 oz tallboy, so now you have to get a 24 oz can in a brown paper bag. So they sell more beer and make more money off people who have to have one right NOW instead of driving home. Where you can crack a six-pack safely.
I must admit that in the summertime, when it’s 95+ and I’ve loaded a shit-ton of hay onto a truck, a very cold beer is nigh onto heavenly, and only lasts a couple of moments. I don’t do hay any more, no livestock, but back in the day…
dww44
@muddyevera@muddy: I to have to deal with gouty arthritis in my big toes. I tried the cherry juice and it does work. However, my nephew put me onto a pill from GNC:
Whenever I feel pain in those toes, I take one of their Black Cherry capsules, generally in the evening. It seems to work for me.
Bess
@Major Major Major Major:
Facts are Gen IV reactors are ideas unproven. And none offer a route to making nuclear affordable.
Thorium fueled reactors would do almost nothing to lower the cost of electricity from reactors, uranium costs less than 1 cent per kWh. There’s little to be saved by using a different fuel.
Pebble bed reactors have been built and no one has figured out how to make them work well enough to use.
The new reactors now being built in Georgia will produce electricity which will cost at least 13 cents per kWh. (Citigroup did the math a couple years back.) And they will be that “cheap” because they received very low financing rates when they started construction during the Great Recession. The recent low bid for new reactors at North Anna, Virginia came in at 19 cents per kWh. Those are wholesale prices. And there are subsidies from taxpayers that lower the cost.
Currently the average retail cost of electricity in the US is 12.5 cents.
Unsubsidized onshore wind in the US is under 4 cents per kWh.
Unsubsidized PV solar in the US is about 6 cents per kWh.
Both wind and solar are probably going to end up between 2 and 3 cents per kWh. And that should happen before anyone could build a new reactor. It’s time to drop the nuclear dream, we have much better sources of electricity and they don’t create radioactive waste.
John Revolta
@gene108: booze delivery
I had some friends in NYC who ran a marijuana delivery service for many years. It was a very good idea for all concerned.
Y’know what’s a BAD idea? Car stereos with subwoofers in ’em that can rattle your teeth while you’re sitting in your house 200 yards away from the goddamn gas station. Whose fucking idea was that??
And now I gotta go mow the lawn, if I can get all these kids off it.
The Pale Scot
Betty, is that the store on Central ave in St Pete?
Schlemazel Khan
I feel bad I missed this thread. I am scraping the house in preparation of painting it. This would have been a lot more fun.
I stopped for gas as a Kwi-Kee Mart in Arizona in the late 70s. There were 4 pumps outside & inside just a counter to pay. The shelf space behind the counter was split in the middle. On the left hand side were pints of liquor, on the right were various handguns. A guy could fill his tank, get a couple of pints of Old Overshoe and a S&W .38 all in one stop. That seemed like a bad idea.
Shalimar
@Amir Khalid: Happy Birthday!!!
Robert Sneddon
@Bess: At the moment in the UK offshore wind power is being bought into the grid at UKP 149.50 per MWh, onshore wind is priced at UKP 95.50 per MWh. That about 22c/kWh and 16c/kWh wholesale respectively, before distribution costs (at-the-meter price for British domestic electricity is about 16c/kWh). Even at that price offshore wind projects are being abandoned as they won’t produce enough revenue to make them profitable. There’s a downturn in onshore wind construction too as a lot of the best sites have been built on and the lesser sites are less profitable, and the high price guarantees won’t last for ever — the renewables industries in the UK are already lawyering up to get the Government to extend their price subsidy periods beyond the cutoffs.
There isn’t a lot more that can be done to make either wind or solar cheaper, most of the technical benefits in terms of design and manufacture have already been applied over the past couple of decades and there’s not a lot of fat to trim. Wind and solar really need grid storage backstop for the times when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow but that’s never figured into the cost of the power generated on the good days.
The really cheap option that’s knocking reactors out of the electricity market in the US is fracked gas feeding combined-cycle gas turbine generators since that’s not weather dependent. Fracked gas is not an inexhaustible resource though so I’d expect an increase in coal burning when the gas reserves are depleted sufficiently, assuming there isn’t a sprint to build out lots of new nuclear reactors when the gas goes away. According to the EIA the US has 478 billion tonnes of coal which can be extracted, that’s enough to power the US current electrical demand for several hundred years by itself.
Prescott Cactus
IIRC nuclear is also taxpayer subsidized via insurance. Only .gov could handle the effect of a US accident like Fukushima. Storing spent fuel rods on site is not the best solution in my opinion either. I did 20 + years in BWR & PWR’s with only a couple weeks of adventure in a newer ABWR.
socraticsilence
You (and well almost everyone else) say bad idea, in New Orleans they phrase it “Laissez les bons temps rouler!”
mike in dc
High Explosives Open Carry.
jonas
I was in Lexington, KY a couple of times in the late 90’s/early 00’s and there was a drive-through liquor store a few blocks from the U of K campus where I was staying. Thought it was pretty hilarious. Along with the ashtrays in the supermarket aisles. You know when you’re in tobacco country.
Robert Sneddon
@Prescott Cactus: The nuclear power industry were paying the US government to deal with spent fuel via a levy of $1 per MWHr generated as it’s regarded as a strategic material. The US Government was pocketing the payments and not dealing with the spent fuel so the generators are necessarily storing spent fuel rods on-site, usually in dry storage after they’ve cooled down for a few years in a wet pool.
Currently the levy payments are in abeyance by court order since the government already has $25 billion in the waste management fund even after blowing $8 billion on pork for Nevada Senator Reid via the Yucca Mountain boondoggle.
phein55
We had drive through liquor stores in Illinois until a couple of years ago, and they may still be legal for all I know.
Now, in Missouri in the 1980s, you could buy gas, liquor and ammo at any number of gas stations on 367 in St. Louis and St. Charles Counties. Perfect from date night in the Missouri Bottoms . . .
workworkwork
@Mustang Bobby: I have one of those. They were designed for Third World areas that get a lot of sun but don’t have reliable electricity. The flashlights let people there work indoors after the sun goes down without having to use a potentially dangerous open flame.
Amir Khalid
Thank you everyone for the very kind birthday wishes.
arawis
Of course, this is Wisconsin where the one of the favorite pastimes is getting drunk, but drive up liquor stores have been here since the 60’s.
Procopius
@The Thin Black Duke: Yeah, the rot began with Nixon when he was vice president.
Eric
@Chris: Maybe I’m wrong, but I would think that’s only a minor problem in the First World.
Eric
@jharp: Just a guess, but the White Sox changed this policy shortly after the “Disco Demolition Night” disaster.
sukabi
@Corner Stone: Steve Schmidt would know a bad idea, but ONLY AFTER he’s pushed it on you.