I realize only two US presidents have maintained Twitter accounts, but my guess is the tweet below goes down in history as the most breathtakingly tacky and hideously inappropriate Memorial Day tweet ever, even if both Twitter and the nation survive for a thousand years:
Ugh — what a contemptible wretch.
As a reward for enduring that, here’s something sweet:
Kisses for Auntie Daisy, who is like, “Okay, kid — whatever.”
Open thread!
germy
Every tweet is either “Sad!” or “Nice!”
Jager
See the shade General Dempsey threw?
“This day, of all days of the year, should not be about any one of us. No matter how prestigious or powerful, no matter how successful we perceive ourselves to be. Rather, this day should be about those who gave their lives so that we could live ours in freedom”. #MemorialDay— GEN(R) Marty Dempsey (@Martin_Dempsey) May 28, 2018
Baud
I’m not a vet, but my understanding is that vets are a large part of Trump’s base. I’m content to let them handle this one.
raven
I just spent a couple of hours oiling my reels and putting my tackle box and “kit” in order!
dmsilev
Cadet Bone Spurs.
(tm Senator Duckworth)
JPL
Daisy is so patient and sweet.
The waves from Betty’s storm keep on coming. Sunshine/rain, sunshine/rain and often within fifteen minutes of each other. The next opening I am taking the mutt for a walk.
hellslittlestangel
It was very presidential of him not to mention that today only Korean Summit commemorative coins are buy one get one free — I mean, Buy One get One FREE!!!
cope
I am not the first to note this nor the most entitled to do so but “Happy” and “Memorial Day” are not at all compatible.
JPL
I’m going to throw some shade on the Melania rumors. She might be in NYC, but she wouldn’t leave without her son. His school year doesn’t end until 6/7.
debbie
@raven:
When’s your trip? Hope the fish fly onto your hook so you don’t have to wrestle the surf again!
debbie
@JPL:
She might have gone ahead to get things ready for him and their summer.
germy
Brachiator
I saw Trump’s Twitter message and gagged. Nothing more to be said about it.
More heartwarming is the story about the illegal immigrant from Mali who quickly scrambled up a building in France to save a child dangling from a balcony.
The French president is reportedly offering the man citizenship. These are the kind of people Trump views as worthless.
The video of this rescue is amazing.
Link
https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/28/asia/paris-baby-spiderman-rescue-intl/index.html
NR
Research finds that centrists are more hostile to democracy than extremists. This is true for many countries apparently, but especially so in the United States.
SiubhanDuinne
Daisy is saintly in her patience, and little Badger is just adorable.
@Baud:
Thinking about how much Trump wants a Nobel Peace Prize (under sporadic discussion downstairs), and seeing your comment, suddenly reminded me of the time when he was first campaigning and a vet gave him his Purple Heart. “Is it real, or a copy?” “It’s my real Purple Heart,” said the vet. “I’ve always wanted one of those,” said Trump. “This was much easier.”
He. Makes. Me. PUKE.
debbie
@Brachiator:
He did get citizenship as well as a job as a fireman.
Mary G
He’s turned over the phone to a smarter person:
There’s a whole series – they appear to be from a speech he’s making.
@Jager: I am impressed with Gen. Demsey’s brand of shade. Blatant. The good kind.
Elizabelle
I am embarrassed for the vets in Trump’s corner, that they could not see through him.
That tweet might give them a hint. Or not.
debbie
@Baud:
Maybe it’s because I have NPR on most of the time, but there are plenty of vets who are anti-Trump.
chris
Got up this morning and found I was a little short on outrage so, of course, I went looking for more. While I was looking I found this Twitter thread which is not exactly what I had in mind but I think everyone should read it.
Also, cute dogs! Fuck Trump.
Brachiator
@Baud:
Yeah. This just amazes me. Even younger vets support Trump more than average citizens.
Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
@hellslittlestangel: If the summit now happens, will they make more?
I blogged a summary of the most common advice re the pitfalls in writing chapter one of a novel.
ETA: Also I forgot to say that puppy is so cute. It almost makes me want to take one on again. Then I remember I’m moving to an apartment that doesn’t allow them.
germy
@Brachiator: The video is amazing. The man jumps up from balcony to balcony. Amazing bravery.
What were the two people doing on the balcony next to the toddler? I can’t tell if they were close enough to reach.
Van Buren
Wait till next year. He always gets worse.
Amir Khalid
@hellslittlestangel:
They’ll be a much better deal pretty soon, when the “White House Gift Shop” (which is not at the White House, not an actual gift shop, and not even a US Government entity) starts offering “buy one, get two free”.
Chyron HR
@NR:
Reminder: Your reaction to losing a primary was to demand that Democrats stop letting people vote.
Aleta
SiubhanDuinne
@JPL:
I understand (well, I saw on the Internets) he’s been living with Melania’s parents at their house in Maryland, close to his school. And it’s less than two weeks. So I can imagine that she’s taking care of business (*cough* divorce attorney *cough*) while Barron wraps up the school year without much disruption.
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: Tight lines!
NR
@Chyron HR: No it wasn’t.
Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
@Aleta: I heart NY
Mary G
@germy: I read that they were holding onto the kid, but there was a barrier between the two balconies. Probably waiting for fire fighters to come with a cherry picker? The rescuer was so nonchalant – a kid needed help, what’s the big deal? Glad Macron is helping him get citizenship.
Chyron HR
@NR:
Hey, remember when Bernie literally demanded that the Democratic party throw out the primary results and declare him the nominee by fiat? His respect for democracy clearly knew no bounds.
Brachiator
@debbie:
From a 2017 Pew story. Sad!
Link
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/05/26/u-s-veterans-are-generally-supportive-of-trump/
Once again, Republicans are crazy, fools who follow their demon king to their room.
Hungry Joe
It’s astonishing how he always manages to say the wrong thing, strike the wrong tone. I mean, he never misses. You’d think that every now and then, just by chance (monkeys, typewriters), he’d send out an ordinary, harmless, inoffensive message. But he can’t do it. The man is just vile. And by that I mean, ONLY vile. That’s all he’s got.
rikyrah
Badger is so cute ? ?
scav
@germy: They were on the balcony next door, arrived and were trying to hold on to the kid but the angle was pretty off for a nice clean pull-up amd over from what I saw / read.
OzarkHillbilly
Hoo boy:
cosima
@chris: That was a very important read, thanks for sharing.
germy
@scav: That’s what it looked like.
HeleninEire
Opening up the bids. Who wants to marry me and be a EU citizen? You know. In a good way
Ruckus
@germy:
I understand there are barriers between the balconies. Someone probably would have to do basically the same as this guy did. May have been even more difficult if the barriers were meant to keep anyone from going balcony to balcony on the same floor.
Still what he did was amazing, and that anyone would even think that’s possible and attempt it.
Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
We saw Solo early this afternoon. I liked it well enough. It’s character driven which is a good thing. We saw previews for “Venom” and the Jurassic Park and both found those really boring. OTOH, I laughed at the The And and the Wasp preview. I wouldn’t mind seeing that.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud:
@Brachiator: Democrats are still perceived as ‘anti-military’.
trollhattan
@Elizabelle:
A recurring theme during the campaign was how she was the warmonger who would definitely get us into combat and that notion carried into active and retired military.
Always thought it was bullshit they didn’t really believe but just window dressing for their resolve to never “vote for that bitch.” Screw those guys.
germy
@Mary G:
Who knows how the incident would have ended if he’d been deported or prevented from entering. It’d be a horrible local story about an infant falling to its death.
Ruckus
@HeleninEire:
I’m a single old fart with no family, possible chronic illness and not much money but can we still talk?
NR
@Chyron HR: Oh, I see. You’re trolling me. Bye.
Anyway, to get back to the topic of the article, the research revealed that centrists are less likely to believe that democracy is a very good system than extremists, centrists are less likely to support free and fair elections, less likely to support civil rights, and more likely to support authoritarianism (they are exceeded in this last measure by the far right in many countries, although notably not the United States).
germy
@HeleninEire:
Can I bring my wife and adult children?
trollhattan
@OzarkHillbilly:
Most dangerous man in government.
raven
@debbie: We delayed leaving until Wednesday. It’s pretty crowded post-Memorial Day but folks don’t really go down to the water until mid-morning and tend to leave around 5. With the late sunset I should have plenty of time to fish.
Jager
@raven: Since you’re a fisherman, you’ll like this. When i was 11 my old man took me on a fishing trip to Lake of the Woods on the Minnesota Canadian border. Of course they all got shit faced as little me captained the boat. One of the guys who worked for my dad was a nitwit named Chick, about the middle of the afternoon he asked “Any thing left to eat?” My dad’s buddy Bobby made chick a sandwich with those minnows preserved in a jar, he slathered it with mustard, Chick ate it, washed it down with a beer and asked for another. Bobby said, “Coming right up.” I heard my old man say fuck for the first time on that fishing trip. Is that a right of passage moment in a boy’s life?
SiubhanDuinne
@chris:
Thank you for linking. That was an extremely useful thread. I hope someone knows how to do that thing where you take a bunch of related tweets and put them into a single, readable narrative.
trollhattan
@Aleta:
Warms my heart. NYers have good BS detectors; wish more would have listened to them in November 2016.
Betty Cracker
@HeleninEire: Must be nice to live in a country that’s heading decisively in the right direction.
David Evans
@Brachiator: Trump will be saying we need to make the wall higher.
SiubhanDuinne
@OzarkHillbilly:
He seems nice.
Roger Moore
@NR:
There’s been a fair bit of discussion of this on Twitter. My gut feeling is that most of those “centrists” who are hostile to democracy really hate all the disagreement. They think there are obvious, common sense solutions to most of our problems, and everything would be better if everyone would just stop bickering and adopt them. What they don’t really get is that other people honestly disagree with them about what’s best, so their “common sense” just means “whatever I think”. IOW, that kind of centrism really boils down to “shut up and do it my way”, which is deeply hostile to democratic norms.
Adam L Silverman
@Jager: GEN Dempsey is a class act. Perhaps the best US Army general officer of his generation. Excellent operational commander. Perhaps the best Training and Doctrine Command commander. And an excellent Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
(Full disclosure: the orders that sent me to USAWC were above GEN Dempsey’s signature)
HeleninEire
@Betty Cracker: Yes. I love it here.
Adam L Silverman
@JPL: The more likely RUMINT is that she spends a lot of time at her parents’ house in DC. Which is very close to her son’s school.
HeleninEire
,@Ruckus: Hmmm. Yes we can.
Frankensteinbeck
“Why don’t the mud people love me?!”
He is the king of all assholes.
NR
@Roger Moore: Yes. I wonder if this is because they think their ideas are non-controversial, while people on the political extremes are used to controversy about their opinions. I think these are also largely the same people who think that it’s bad to ‘politicize’ topics.
Also, as the article noted, middle-class centrists have historically supported authoritarians in many countries, all in the name of “growth and stability” of course.
Elizabelle
@Van Buren: Next year we could have President Pelosi.
Brachiator
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
But Trump’s “support” for the military is such blatant horse shit, I’m surprised that it apparently fools so many veterans.
HeleninEire
@germy: Would like to say yes
But the EU and Ireland will say no. Sorry.
Ladyraxterinok
@?BillinGlendaleCA: One brother was in Vietnam and is permanently ‘I’ll never vote for any democrat’ because ‘democrats betrayed the US military in Vietnam.’
I learned this during the 2000 selection.
Betty Cracker
Badger is the biggest drama llama! He got a bath this weekend, and he carried on as if he were being skinned alive! Poor Daisy was traumatized. ?
Arclite
@debbie: Those would be the black and Hispanic vets.
raven
@Jager: Hell yes! We used to take these big trips over to the Mississippi River at Keokuk Iowa/Hamilton Il. We usually caught these goofy drum perch some cat and, very rarely, a smallmouth. There was this dude who was always kind of a dick and he caught a bass and made a huge deal out of it an going on and on about how he wanted it when we fried everything up. If course someone switched his bass for a perch and he never knew the diff. When he left Champaign there was a big party for him and one of the boys taped some whole fish inside his hubcaps. We always wondered how funky it got when he hit the road to Florida in July!
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Brachiator: The perception really dates back to the antiwar protests and so ‘the left'(aka Democrats) are viewed as anti-military. Both Nixon and St. Ronnie ran on this, the perception has lasted, even among younger vets.
Elizabelle
@Betty Cracker: I love Badger. Hope he enjoys his next bath more. I wonder why he doesn’t like it. Ear problems? Or just general drama llamadom?
OzarkHillbilly
@HeleninEire: How about adopting me?
Brachiator
@NR:
I’m suspecting bad data and bad analysis. Maybe if I have time later, I will look at the detail links.
Ruckus
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
I think a lot of dems are anti military, at least as the military has been used in this country for the last 75 yrs. I know lots of dems who are anti military in that regard, that we invade countries that have done nothing to us, that lots of people die because of our military, including our own, for what looks like negative to very negative short and long term strategic value. It isn’t the military exactly they are anti military to, it’s the use of it’s force, the fact that very few citizens take part and therefore pay any price to it’s use. It’s the waste of building airplanes the don’t work and yet cost way too much for both the program and each plane, it’s having ships which are undermanned and past their service lives, and having those pushed out 40 to 50% farther.
There’s lots more.
It isn’t the military itself that a lot of dems hate it’s what the military has become to this country and a lot of it’s politicians.
FlipYrWhig
@Roger Moore:
I suspect this is precisely the profile of the Obama-Obama-Trump voter. We tend to conflate “centrists,” “moderates,” and whatever this anti-politics-politics kind is, but, yes, it’s that particular flavor of middle-aged white man “cut the bullshit” act that I most associate with McCain ’00, and that cast a spell on people like Jon Stewart.
raven
@debbie: I keep forgetting to mention this. Our neighbor was just re-elected to the city council along with a very progressive slate. She’s white but has made real inroads into the African American community mostly by busting her ass. Anyway I was talking to her husband and he did a great deal of canvassing on her behalf. He said he was blown away by how many black folks were Trump supporters. Not scientific and he wasn’t judging but he was really surprised.
Steeplejack (phone)
@JPL:
Her parents bought a house in Maryland near Barron’s school. Melania is probably there.
Yarrow
@raven: Did he get any insight into why they’re Trump supporters?
raven
@Ladyraxterinok: Oh yea, it’s very pervasive. I’m a real outlier, especially down her in Georgia. I always say, “yea, if we just could have killed another million or so we would have won”.
FlipYrWhig
@Brachiator: IMHO it rings true for, say, Egypt, or Turkey, or maybe Latin America, but not so much for “Western” democracies.
raven
@Yarrow: We didn’t have a chance to get into it much but I got the sense that it was along the “what have you go to lose” thing and the fact that they didn’t really feel any progress with Obama.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Adam L Silverman:
Not in D.C., Maryland. Barron’s school is actually quite a distance from the city.
NR
@Brachiator: Here is the link to the full paper.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@FlipYrWhig: one thing common to trump and Bernie voters, and Perot voters twenty-odd years ago, is the idea that politics should be simple, just common sense, just get under the hood and fix it. Perot was big among my dad’s golf buddies at his second-tier country club. Late middle-aged, upper-middle class white guys who thought they know could “balance the budget” a meaningless catch-all for just about everything, because they never went to college now they owned a plumbing supply company with three warehouses and 22 trucks!
FlipYrWhig
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I think Bernie Sanders got a lot of votes from that crowd, and while it’s easy to start falling for the idea that the Sanders vote was “the left” and hence that the left was a lot bigger than anyone previously imagined, that profile isn’t left, or particularly ideological at all, it’s, let’s say, cranky.
Bess
@Mary G:
I want to take nothing away from the man who scaled the building and hauled the child back in, but once the person on the other side of the barrier was holding the child’s arm there was little chance of the child falling. At some point the fire department would have shown up and rescued the child. Had the child let loose of their hold then he would have swung around where the neighbor could have pulled him up.
JPL
@Steeplejack (phone): Depending on traffic, it’s probably only about 30 minutes. I wouldn’t leave a twelve year old alone with the asshole.
debbie
@raven:
Unbelievable.
Quinerly
Prepare to be sick. Jr is building his base for 2024:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/may/28/donald-trump-jr-high-demand-conservative-groups-wary
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Yup balance the budget like a household does, cause households never take on more debt than they make annually(except for the mortgage, car loan…).
MagdaInBlack
Thank you for the sweetness ?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Quinerly: I thought Ivanka was going to run.
Felanius Kootea
@Bess: The neighbors weren’t there when he started scaling the building.
Jager
@raven: My dad had a motor home, he and I took a little trip to my BIL’s lake place in Minnesota. The old man is casting for walleyes off the dock one early evening, the Loons are raising hell. My BIL and I are sitting on the lawn splitting a bottle of Johnny Walker and we hear the old man yell at the Loons, “Jesus Christ Janice shut up!”
Since my Mom’s name was Janice my BIL and I fell off our chairs laughing. Now that i wrote that I miss the old WWII pilot even more than I normally do. .
HeleninEire
@: Thinking about how much you can walk around the table.
Adam L Silverman
@NR: @Chyron HR: @NR: @Roger Moore: @Brachiator: I’ve just read the working draft, which can be found here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1fOGwtRUF-y-98IcDs-3YYrtREl8GbaoH/view
My conclusions, which I’d make if I was reviewing this for publication, are below. Minus recommendations of other works he would need to read in order to correct what in my professional opinion are fatal flaws of assumption in his work.
The author makes several theoretical assumptions while citing limited, and in some cases exceedingly dated, empirical support from the literature on the subject in order to establish the parameters for his methodology. For instance, use of Rokeach’s classic late 1960s and early 1970s study on political attitudes in the US to delineate that those on the US left prefer equality, while those on the right prefer freedom. Especially, as the author fails to actually define these terms. Either as Rokeach used them or as they are currently used in the US in 2016.
These assumptions, which are not solidly rooted in the literature on political positioning on a variety of scales, as well as how it varies from state to state and even within regions of states, is what is driving his findings. Not the data. Basically he set up his research assumptions in a way that drove the results. This wasn’t exactly selecting his explanatory variables on his outcome variables, but it was as damaging a methodological mistake. There is absolutely no discussion of the fact that the political center in the US is far farther to the right than it is in almost every other advanced liberal democracy. Nor, in his dealing with the EU data, is there a discussion of where the various centers are in relation to each other in the different EU states. It is this lack of empirical context that shows the weakness of this research. Especially as there is far more detailed and fully formed research showing that the real drivers of anti-democratic sentiment in the US is directly and strongly correlated with beliefs of white Americans that they are not just being left behind, but are purposefully being forced behind by the results of elections and policies enacted by those who are elected. And these correlations are so strong that they swamp all other political, social, and economic concerns. The studies that delineate these findings are all very recent, largely conducted in the past 18 months as a result of the President’s election and the popular arguments made about who his supporters are and why they support him.
To sum up: this study is superficial. It fails to properly account for the literature, as well as the changes in empirical differences in political ideological positions over time, as well as their relative differences from state to state.
OzarkHillbilly
@Jager: Believe it or not I had a very similar experience on Lake of the Woods when I was 10. My Aunt Betty and Uncle Tony had a fishing camp out at Fish Narrows (Tamarack Lodge) and my 18 yr old cousin Bob and I would go in to pick up guests. Unbeknownst to anyone but him and I, as soon as we left the island I’d take over piloting the “Blue Whale” (an old diesel with lots of room for guests and luggage) and take it in while Bob napped below, (when returning guests to the govt dock I would pilot the boat back). It was easy enough, no reefs just open water and a point I would aim at and when we got close, I’d wake Bob up. This was something we had been doing for a couple years. One time we were picking a rather large group up, more than one boat could handle so we towed the speed boat behind. Bob gave the speed boat over to some of the guests with instructions on which way to go that they promptly forgot when they took off. He managed to flag them down and they came back. It was decided that he would take the speed boat and I would follow with the rest of the guests in the Blue Whale. When he got to my A&U’s camp they were all quite surprised and somewhat distraught at the idea of a 10 yr old piloting the boat over 12 (?) miles of open water and even more amazed when I turned into the channel 15-20 minutes later. They were also more than a little upset as the guests came tumbling out of the boat so drunk they could barely walk and one at least puking his guts out.
My Aunt Betty was giving Bob a very accusatory look and preparing an epic tongue lashing (Betty had a razor sharp tongue). Bob put on his most innocent face and said, “What? They were sober when I left.”
Adam L Silverman
@SiubhanDuinne:
I do believe it’s called blogging.
Jager
@Quinerly: Have we ever elected a president without a chin?
Amir Khalid
@Betty Cracker:
Bathtime aside, is Badger always this sweet with Auntie Daisy?
raven
@Jager: Aw man I hear ya. My old man was a WWII Destroyer Sailor and in 96 we met up in Destin and I took him deep sea fishing. Mind you this was a guy who spent the entire war in the Pacific with multiple landings in the Solomons up to Okinawa. Well, he fucking hated it! I said “coach, they don’t go back in because someone doesn’t like it”! We did visit the Alabama and I was blown away how much he knew about the craft.
Betty Cracker
@Elizabelle: He really is a drama dog! If Daisy looks at him cross-eyed, he flops over on his back. It’s a constant source of amusement!
Adam L Silverman
@Steeplejack (phone): Thanks for the info. But the larger point in the RUMINT stands, that it is more likely she is spending a lot of time with him at her parents’, which is near his school. Wherever that school actually is.
HeleninEire
@OzarkHillbilly: yes the blog fucked up I would to adopt you..
Steeplejack (phone)
Outtake from the royal wedding: Randy Watson and Sexual Chocolate.
Adam L Silverman
@Jager: Taft had three!
Yarrow
@raven: That’s interesting. I wonder if they now see what they have to lose. I know a lot of people who didn’t think they were in danger, or their rights were in danger, see what is happening and don’t feel safe.
raven
@Yarrow: I’m going to ask him for more info.
Amir Khalid
@Adam L Silverman:
And Trump is working hard to break Taft’s record!
Betty Cracker
@Amir Khalid: He’s like a little kid — he sneaks up on her and pounces, etc. He wants to play every moment he’s awake. I’m sure she gets sick of it, but she’s a good sport and knows how to get away from him if she needs a break.
El Caganer
@germy: Yeah, if it had happened here, ICE would have shown up, asked for his green card, deported him, and thrown the kid into a detention center.
OzarkHillbilly
@HeleninEire: Cool. Now I have a choice of Spain (my wife is from there) or Ireland.
Jager
@OzarkHillbilly: I think the place we stayed on that trip was called Trail’s End. I’d been running boats since i was 6 or so, so I knew what i was doing. I’d never been on a lake that big before and the only map (chart) we had was a place mat from the restaurant. Fishing in Minnesota is really serious drinking with an attempt to catch a fish or two in between beers. My dad’s best friend Bobby had an 18 foot Cris Craft Express with the 6 cylinder Gray marine. Heavy as hell and he pulled it behind his Lincoln Capri 2 door hardtop. Those old boats are gold today. At our lake place we had a cedar strip 14 foot fishing boat with a Johnson ten and one of those trick Falls Flyers with a Merc 50 for skiing. I used so much gas, the old man got me a Sunfish, been sailing ever since.
Suzanne
@HeleninEire: Hey, baby.
Adam L Silverman
@Amir Khalid: There’s a difference between 3 chins and 1 exceedingly large one. Something like this:
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/TtUlQ0zXN1w/maxresdefault.jpg
Steeplejack (phone)
@OzarkHillbilly:
No fair! You can’t hog two spots when someone else might need one.
japa21
@El Caganer: If it had happened here, he might not have tried for that exact reason.
OzarkHillbilly
@Jager: Trails End is not familiar to me. The govt dock they used was in Morson, Ontario. I had a lot of really good times up there including spending a season working on their island after I graduated HS.
I have only had the pleasure of sailing once (on one of the Finger Lakes in NY) I loved it. If I lived anywhere close to suitable waters I’d at the very least own a Sunfish.
Chyron HR
@NR:
It’s funny that just yesterday, the “extremist left’s” nazi poster girl, Chelsea Manning, was telling people to give up on voting because democracy is a failure. Just another example of y’all’s deep respect for democracy, I’m sure.
OzarkHillbilly
@Steeplejack (phone): Options buddy, it’s all about keeping your options open.
SiubhanDuinne
@raven:
Years ago I attended one of those interchangeable subnational conferences — Southern Governors or Southern Legislators or some such — in Mobile. One of the evening receptions was on board the USS Alabama. The booze was flowing, the food was plentiful, there was a military band and a dance band. Gorgeous summer night, stars fell on Alabama, all that. Then around 9:30 or whenever it got really dark, they started a fireworks display. Nobody was expecting fireworks — the organizers hadn’t announced them — but over Mobile Bay, from on board a wonderful battleship, I have to tell you that was without question the best fireworks show I’ve ever seen. It lasted a long time, too. Magic.
Kraux Pas
Fixt for broader applicability
zhena gogolia
@Steeplejack (phone):
That is funny but I had no idea what it came from. I never saw that movie.
Mnemosyne
@NR:
So Kris Kobach is a centrist and Tom Perez is an extremist?
That’s certainly a fascinating claim.
Betty Cracker
@SiubhanDuinne: Sounds wonderful! I know that ship well. My paternal grandparents lived in the Mobile area for many years, and my sister and I used to rejoice when we saw that ship because it meant our long car ride was almost over!
Yutsano
@Quinerly: Oh for the love of…
Just end it now.
Mary G
@SiubhanDuinne: Here you go.
Betty, Badger is adorable and Great Aunt Daisy is very tolerant. Does she ever look at you like “take him away now, I need a nap” or do you just do it on your own?
HeleninEire
@OzarkHillbilly: pick ireland.
SiubhanDuinne
@HeleninEire:
How do the Irish feel about a Commune of Jackals?
BruceFromOhio
I wish there was a Cleek Filter for Twitter accounts.
@OzarkHillbilly: Sunfish are awesome. There are few experiences like watching the cats paws coming and catching one just right where she tightens up, you can jam your feet under the far edge of the cockpit, haul it in where you can hang your ass on the waves, and you are cutting across the water lickety split.
Watch your head!
Yutsano
@HeleninEire: The interesting thing is that wherever I move to in the EU/Australia/New Zealand I already have an employment opportunity, I can simply help American expats get their tax filings either caught up or done. So as far as work goes I’m pretty much set.
SiubhanDuinne
@Betty Cracker:
Yeah, it’s hard to miss!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@SiubhanDuinne: hmmmm….. we could crowd fund us up one of them old monasteries……
rikyrah
@Quinerly:
???
Duane
Historically, Republicans ruin everything. Sports. Religion. Patriotism. Holidays. They haven’t learned a fucking thing from history. People should spit and curse when they hear their name. The evil ideology they support must be killed, for the good of humanity.
sukabi
@Baud: maybe the officer corps, the enlisted ranks are a very diverse group…many Hispanic and AA as well as others. Much more representative of the population at large.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: We hosted a T supporting AF vet this weekend. An old friend who we saw after almost 20 years. Him and his wife were our friends when we were all in college.
Steeplejack (phone)
@zhena gogolia:
It’s actually pretty good (Coming to America).
Jager
@OzarkHillbilly: I’d been sailing my Sunfish for about 7 years when i got to college, I was self taught. The sailboat builder Charlie Morgan used to say, “The best way to teach a kid to sail is to put a life jacket on them, give a bottle of water, stick them in the boat and they’ll figure it out.” When i got to college I joined the sailing club. You had to take a nomenclature test. I didn’t know the name of anything or one sailing term. They took me out on the Charles, I sailed the hell out of the boat, the instructor said how can you sail if you don’t know the difference between close hauled and a reach and you call the mainsheet, “that rope you pull that’s hooked to the big sail.”,
JPL
Another one bites the dust.
Rep. Thomas Garrett (R-Va.) announced Monday that he is struggling with alcoholism and will abandon his run for a second term in Congress so he can focus on recovery and his family.
BruceFromOhio
@Jager: Doesn’t matter what you call it if you are sailing solo! Nicely done, sailor.
SiubhanDuinne
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Now that is an inspired idea! Love it!
@Mary G: Bless you for that! Exactly what I hoped for. Saved, bookmarked, and ready to share!
raven
@SiubhanDuinne: NIce, you might like this tune
When it’s midnight down in Mobile
Shinin’ moonbeams on the bay
They come from miles around to dance the jukebox down
And dig the good time sounds they all play
And all across the harbour
Night lights shinin’ in
stars on the water
(Just like) stars on the water
(Feels like) stars on the water, let it rain
debbie
@Betty Cracker:
Daisy’s face puts me in mind of Lurch (I have no idea how to categorize that noise he makes).
SiubhanDuinne
@JPL:
If he genuinely is trying to overcome alcoholism, good for him, more power to him, and good luck.
Now to get partisan: anybody from the area know whether this is a reasonable pickup for us?
Mike in NC
We’ve lived in our current community for 10 years, having moved from NoVA where we lived and worked for 20 years. We started meeting our neighbors, few of whom grew up in the South. They were mainly from upstate New York, Long Island, and New Jersey. Retired from comfortable middle class careers as policemen, firefighters, teachers, nurses, realtors, etc. Not all were raging racists by any means, but enough of them were, and almost all would accept as indisputable fact that middle class white people were being somehow wronged or marginalized. This is the result of years of exposure to the modern Wingnut Wurlitzer: Fox News, VFW, NRA, NewsMax, talk radio and dozens of other messengers they were eager to embrace. Even the notion that there was a Miss Black USA contest drove them over the edge!
Bannon knew what he was doing when he created the Trump Golem.
NR
@Mnemosyne: The study was of citizens, not party/elected officials.
frosty
@BruceFromOhio:
I learned to sail on one. My brother would be on the tiller, and I’d have the sheet. We’d point it into the wind and play chicken. First one to turn or dump the wind to avoid capsizing was chicken. It was usually me.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
apologies if this was already posted, but I can’t remember if I saw this earlier here or on twitter, and it’s so nice we can read it twice
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
How could 89.2k people like that tweet?
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
How could 89.2k people like that tweet??
Baud
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?: Bots are people, my friend.
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@Not a Russian:
Too bad Chryon is broadly correct. I guess pointing out reality is trolling.
sdhays
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: It was, but it’s the kind of thing that’s not unwelcome to see again.
Adam L Silverman
@Baud: But are they Soylent Green?
patrick II
@NR:
First, that statement itself is oxymoronish. If you live in a democracy and are hostile to democracy, then you are not a centrist.
Second, people have different definitions of the same word. For instance “people who say democracy is a very good political system”. Someone on the far right might agree that democracy is very good, but equate total free market capitalism as intrinsic to democracy, or only if “proper voter id” is enforced (read voter suppression). Or a centrist might think democracy in their country is a good, but not very good system, as I might given the cracks showing in our 250 year old constitution.
And third, Nancy LeTourneau over at Political Animal discusses the results of a poll that come to the exact opposite conclusions:The Threat of Authoritarianism in the name of bigotry
And finally, my own anecdotal evidence of conservatives I know who do not acknowledge liberal views as having a right to govern.
Elizabelle
@SiubhanDuinne: Interesting to hear about Thomas Garrett. Speculation he was going to announce quitting last week. And, got to say, when I hear “alcoholism” I think, good lord, what is about to drop now?
WaPost:
Stay tuned.
dexwood
@Jager:
That’s pretty much how I learned to sail as a pre-teen on the Magothy River – small boat, good friends.
If I had a way to link to a photo received via text a bit ago, I’d post a pic of an actual goddamn badger caught by my son today. Fierce, angry, dangerous.
Baud
@patrick II: You may not be familiar with NR’s oeuvre, but Juicers are the centrists in his paradigm.
SiubhanDuinne
@raven:
That was really nice, thank you! Have never particularly followed Jimmy Buffett (I think his fans are called “parrot heads”?) but every time I hear one of his numbers I immediately like it. This is a good one, thanks.
Jager
@frosty: The first few weeks I had mine I spent more time in the water than in the cockpit. Years later I was taking a racing class in Solings and the instructor and he said “if you don’t get the top of the mast wet, you an’t sailing” About 20 years ago, we were sailing a 45 foot center cockpit and got caught in a storm off Florida, winds hit 55 mph and since it was blowing against the Gulf Stream the waves were approaching 20 feet. I was the only one who wasn’t seasick and I managed the boat well enough to get us to West End in the Bahamas without breaking anything. When i sailed her across the Bahama Bank and things calmed down, I thought, all the years I’ve been doing this came down to this one night.
Elizabelle
More from the WaPost story (and, FWIW, I had never heard of Garrett before last week):
I guess it will depend on his district.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Baud: I figure he’s building up to “OBAMA WAS WORSE THAN TRUMP AND TRUMP IS HIS FAULT!”
Betty Cracker
@schrodingers_cat: Oof. It must’ve been hard to hold your tongue, if you did. I recently reconnected with an old high school pal and her husband, who also ride motorcycles. I made discreet inquiries to make sure they weren’t goddamned Trumpers before committing to any plans!
Baud
@Betty Cracker: You should publish a test in a future post.
Elizabelle
LOL on Politico’s headline:
Servant scandal.
sdhays
@patrick II: There’s also “technocratic centrism” that is actually pretty hostile to democracy – basically the idea that political problems need to be taken away from politicians and shoved into the domain of “wise experts” so that the stupid riffraff can just shut up and be governed wisely. Those people are extremists too, just on a somewhat different dimension (which fits with your point #1).
Yarrow
@Elizabelle:
It’s weird to say those are the two things people know about him, especially since he is only just now publicly disclosing his alcoholism. Voters didn’t know.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@SiubhanDuinne: Josh Marshall was tweeting about this the other day when the retirement rumors first surfaced. I can’t find it but IIRC it’s a fairly red district, mostly southern, rural VA, but it does stretch up into the bluer parts nearer to DC
JPL
@SiubhanDuinne: He used his aides to run errands for he and his wife, including picking up poop. He can call it what he wants, but he was a libertarian grifter.
zhena gogolia
@Betty Cracker:
My neighbors across the street (they’re on a corner so their backyard is opposite our front yard) have their above-ground pool festooned with red-white-and-blue bunting, so I assume they’re Trumpanzees. I’ve lived here 26 years and never saw that before. (Plus their next-door neighbor implied as much to me, claiming that the neighborhood is full of what she calls “lovers,” her term for Trumpanzees.)
Baud
@Elizabelle: Maybe they meant “server” scandal, which we know is the worst crime in the universe.
JPL
@JPL: This is a tweet from politco
Elizabelle
@Baud: Server scandal. That occurred to me. I also wondered if it was at all related to NRA funding. Red rural district.
Hmmmm. Leslie Cockburn is a journalist, formerly with PBS and 60 Minutes. And mother of actress Olivia Wilde.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Adam L Silverman: No.
schrodingers_cat
@Betty Cracker: He is more of a never HRC person than a die-hard T supporter. We did have a blazing argument at the beginning of their stay and got that out of the way. We all agreed on how Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell suck.
ETA: He used to make excuses for the Confederacy before but now thinks that the South needs to just get over it. And that those Confederate statues belong in museums not city squares. So husband kitteh thinks that there is still hope for our friend.
ETA2: He was also mocking BushII and his Mission Accomplished theater.
raven
@SiubhanDuinne: One of my favs
I know I don’t get there often enough
But God knows I surely try
It’s a magic kind of medicine
That no doctor could prescribe
I used to rule my world from a pay phone
Ships out on the sea
But now times are rough
And I got too much stuff
Can’t explain likes of me
Redshift
@Elizabelle: From what I remember seeing a while back, the 5th District is tough but not impossible for a Democrat to win. It probably would have been easier if he’d hung on longer, but depriving the GOP of the advantage of incumbency is still good.
Elizabelle
From Leslie Cockburn’s “Why She’s Running” page. Cockburn is apparently a documentary filmmaker, too, and married to Irish journalist Andrew Cockburn. They apparently did a good doc on the mortgage scandal.
LESLIE COCKBURN FOR CONGRESS
https://www.lesliecockburnforcongress.com/why-shes-running
Elizabelle
@Redshift: I’m excited. I hope she can do well. We have to try to roust Dave Brat in my district; he will get a stronger than usual Democratic challenger (primary in June).
raven
And the ever popular
Yes I am a pirate, two hundred years too late
The cannons don’t thunder, there’s nothing to plunder
I’m an over-forty (60) victim of fate
Arriving too late, arriving too late
I’ve done a bit of smuggling, I’ve run my share of grass
I made enough money to buy Miami, but I pissed it away so fast
Never meant to last, never meant to last
Mixed with the great Redemption Song
Thoughtful David
@Elizabelle:
This is bad news. We had a chance to beat him. Leslie Cockburn, the Dem opponent, is a good candidate, but even against Garrett it was an uphill slog. Now the Republicans will have a chance to put in a less asshole or even unknown candidate with a better chance to win. So it hurts our chance of a pickup.
The story about alcoholism is bullshit. It’s a cover for something worse. I’m guessing an assault.
scav
Utterly OT, but I just saw a big sea otter cross the back yard!
ETA, well, ok, maybe it’ll slide in under the Historic heading, as he’s my very first one.
Miss Bianca
@HeleninEire: Meee! Meee! I’ll do it!
Elizabelle
@Redshift: Do you think the district lies within what used to be state senator Emily Couric’s constituency? Sounds rather similar ….
schrodingers_cat
@scav: Sea otter? I thought you lived in Massachusetts.
Ruckus
@HeleninEire:
mmmmm, I’m intrigued.
chris
@SiubhanDuinne: I would have unrolled the thread but to do that I’d need a Twitter account. And that ain’t gonna happen, I’d never sleep!
Thanks, Mary G.
Ruckus
@Frankensteinbeck:
He wanted to be king of something.
Might as well be the one thing he’s good at.
scav
@schrodingers_cat: Nope. Moved from the middle (Chicago) to the upper left. That’s Canada outside my window now, well, after all the water for said otter.
Frankensteinbeck
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
No, I’ve noticed that since Hillary came along, they don’t need to blame Obama for anything anymore. They really, really, drooling foam level hate Hillary.
Villago Delenda Est
@Yarrow: He’s a Rethuglican. This means he is not a good man, period. He’s also a teabagger, which doubles the evil.
trollhattan
@scav:
You live somewhere much more interesting than I do. I have equal odds of seeing a walrus or hippo as I do a sea otter.
I guess a very lost river otter could make it two miles past I-5 and visit–my fish pond would be worse for the encounter.
Baud
@HeleninEire:
I don’t think I could afford you.
trollhattan
@Frankensteinbeck:
Considering their white-hot Hillary hate began in 1992 before they knew Obama existed, I believe it.
Yarrow
@Thoughtful David: Maybe. The new Republican candidate won’t be an incumbent and that makes a difference.
NR
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?: Bringing up false and irrelevant bullshit in response to something unrelated is most certainly trolling.
Mary G
@trollhattan: It all goes back to that 60 Minutes interview they did in 1992 to rehabilitate the Big Dog from the bimbo eruptions. She said that she wasn’t doing a Tammy Wynette and standing by her man, and baking cookies. I was “Yes! A feminist” and the rest of the country went insane.
Chyron HR
@NR:
You’re absolutely right, when Our Revolution demands that Democrats pick their candidate through caucuses rather than letting people vote, it’s because they LOVE DEMOCRACY SO MUCH.
Baud
@Mary G: And a lot of people then hated on her for, in fact, not divorcing Bill.
Barbara
@Betty Cracker: I had a corgi that learned the word bath. When he heard it he would quietly exit the room and hide in the hope we didn’t find him. He had too much dignity to carry on the way it sounds like Badger did.
Jeffro
@Frankensteinbeck:
Yup. Three reasons (ymmv):
1) She’s been aiming at them for over three decades and knows exactly who’s she’s dealing with…
2) If she hadn’t stuck by Bill back in ’98, his sham impeachment BS would have turned into a real impeachment and conviction
3) She really, REALLY called them out during the ’16 campaign.
They’ll never be able to marshall their firepower on one Dem candidate like that again…at least, not in the next two decades. No other current Democrat has had so many lies and hatred directed at her/him for anything near that length of time.
Ruckus
@Jager:
Ha!
We used to do that in the navy. Floor, wall, ceiling, door, stairs, left, right, pointy end, flat end. All because it drove the lifers mad. Most of us only did it when one of them fucked with us or one of the assholes was in earshot, but not using the nautical terms was fun. The best was the question of what’s left or right if you are facing astern. Depends on if you are talking about me or the boat. Calling it a boat was bad enough, the thing weighed 4400 tons. That’s not a carrier but it’s not a starfish either.
I can’t imagine why the asshole lifers didn’t like us……….
Jeffro
@Mary G: it goes back before that…;)
Shell
And that lumpy pound of cream cheese, Hugh Hewitt, was on MSNBC insisting its routine for Presidents to praise themselves on Memorial Day. Of course he couldnt give a single example for this curious assertion…
NR
@patrick II:
This doesn’t logically follow. It might very well be the case that people who position themselves in the political center might also prefer an authoritarian system given the choice. That certainly seems to be what this data suggests.
Broadly agree with the contention that people define words like “left,” “centrist,” and “right” differently, but there are nonetheless trends we can observe. It seems that centrists want their ideas to rule (as do most people), but are less particular about how that happens than other ideologies.
I don’t know that this is really an “opposite” conclusion. Bigotry and xenophobia can transcend traditional political ideologies under certain circumstances.
In any event, I’m not claiming this study is the end-all be-all of the discussion, but I also think it supplements the historical evidence we have that we might not be able to rely on the “center” to save us from authoritarianism.
Jeffro
@Elizabelle:
Thoughts and prayers (and eventual campaign donations to the Dem) from NoVA that this happens…Brat is horrendous just like Barbara Comstock. Smilin’, well-dressed, sane on the outside…head full of snakes inside.
Barbara
@raven: In my experience, the sad reality is that “questioning the mission,” i.e., debating the political wisdom of military deployment in a given situation is interpreted by many as disparagement of the military itself. Of course, politicians in favor of the deployment are especially apt to whip up this sentiment. Dick Cheney and George W. Bush, draft evaders thought they might have been, were all too happy to paint opponents to the disastrous 2003 invasion of Iraq in this light.
Jeffro
@Shell: Hugh will throw some serious bullshit out there, trying his best to make this maladministration appear normal. He’ll parse things down to the finest detail when called out on it, too.
Here’s hoping he keeps his radio plugged in at all times and right next to his bathtub!
Ruckus
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Soylent Red?
Elizabelle
@Jeffro: I am a woman who is going to be up in his grill!
frosty
@dexwood: My parents moved to the Magothy and I did some Sunfishing there. Proudest accomplishment was going out to the Bay on a reach, circling the Baltimore Light and heading back. Could see Kent Island but turned around instead. :-)
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Shell: I don’t know much about Hewitt, but my guess is his eyes are on the prize of the judiciary, which if trump were impeached tomorrow morning and removed in the afternoon, he would already have changed significantly. I wish there were some way for our side to get the importance of judges through its collective thick skull.
Mary G
RIP Gardner Dozois, one of the great science fiction editors. From Cory Doctorow at Boing-Boing:
frosty
@Jager:
@Baud: .
Great story. I’m still a day sailor, in a 14 ft Blue Jay.
stinger
@HeleninEire: I’m a cis het female, but your offer is intriguing!
dexwood
@frosty:
Kent Island is where a neighbor had his 48′ retired fishing vessel anchored. He restored the beast. I’d spend a week or two living on it with him and his daughter every summer.
Sister Golden Bear
@Adam L Silverman: They’re crunchier, and leave a metallic taste in your mouth.
dexwood
@dexwood:
Adding. Mid 60s, loads of fun, fresh fish and steamed crabs every evening. High desert of New Mexico these days.
Ruckus
@Jager:
I’d bet your night was a lot longer than mine. And a whole lot harder.
I had a 30 ft O’Day for a while, got a spinnaker wrap solo sailing one late afternoon, just as I was starting to take it down and got really, really close to putting it on the beach but managed, by luck only, to make it down the channel and radio the harbormaster. We managed to get tied up to his dock and tried everything to get it to free up to no avail. I finally decided to go up and cut the thing down because I had no other option, pulled on the halyard one last time, even though both of us had been trying together to free it. Put my hand on it, just started to pull and the whole thing came down normal. So ended up not losing the boat, not losing my new $1500 sail….. Actually a good day sailing.
Adam L Silverman
@NR: I notice the one person you refuse to engage with on this is the one person with a PhD in political science who specializes in the role of identity, among other things, in political violence. Stop digging the hole you’re in. I’ve already taken down the research you’re basing your argument on. In case you missed it the first time, here it is again copied and pasted from above:
https://balloon-juice.com/2018/05/28/historic-open-thread/#comment-6888415
Uncle Cosmo
@SiubhanDuinne:
And just what are the chances of that? I give you two choices: Slim, and none. If he has any problem with C2H5OH it most likely comes from having to stupefy nightly whatever vestige of morality he retains so he never misses a beat goosestepping to the party line.
I would respect these clowns more if they just said, I realized I was powerless over the high I get from inflicting my bigotry, misogyny & general hatefulness on the American people.
Steve in the ATL
@Adam L Silverman: oh, SNAP!
NR
@Adam L Silverman: Oh, I didn’t see your comment. I pied Chryon, so your reply to him was pied as well.
In any case, while you raise some legitimate concerns with the research, I think it’s a stretch to use “taken down” the way you are. For example, I’m not sure why you call out the lack of discussion of the differences in the location of the political center by country when the results are presented by country. It’s not as though the results from the United States, with its more rightward political center, are skewing the results for other countries. The results can be analyzed and evaluated by country in the context of that country’s politics.
Anyway, I appreciate the thoughtful analysis.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Ruckus:
Soylent Magenta(magenta is the opposite of green).
Citizen Alan
@HeleninEire:
Where can I send a resume?
Chyron HR
@NR:
Yes indeed, there’s nothing in the least bit centrist about Our Revolution, a political movement devoted solely to telling minorities to shut up so that the white race can be made great again.
NR
@Chyron HR:
Really? Tell me more.
frosty
@Ruckus: Not losing your boat is a good day. I was in the Thousand Islands a few years back in winds just under small craft warnings in the Blue Jay (with my cousins daughters) and at one point decided if we rammed a granite island and scrambled to shore I’d be happy. Fortunately it didn’t come to that and we got back in one piece.
J R in WV
@Ladyraxterinok:
But Nixon was president from 1968 til we withdrew from ‘Nam at his command?!?!?! How weird that he would blame the party NOT in command!!!
Ruckus
@frosty:
I heard once that any day you end up in port, still on a floating boat is a good day. I liked sailing, I really did but owning a medium sized or bigger boat is like owning an old airplane. You are likely to hit water or rocks and not in a good way, it takes hours of work for every hour of sailing, and it’s mostly boring, with moments of shear terror thrown in just to keep you on your toes. As I’ve gotten older that purposely going out and looking for trouble is getting a bit tiring. I spent about 20 seconds thinking of buying a boat to live aboard for retirement. Then laughed at myself.
satby
@SiubhanDuinne: @Jim, Foolish Literalist: I’m totally in!
Ruckus
@J R in WV:
I’m getting the impression his hate isn’t about democrats and the war. Although I have to put in the obligatory Fuck LBJ here. I think it goes deeper than the war and Vietnam. Also although I think a lot of people were snookered by Nixon’s “I’ll get us out of Vietnam!” bullshit and never wanted to admit that they got taken. And of course he eventually did get us out. It was well after he fucked the pooch though and how many more had to die? But yeah I think there’s more here than has ever seen sunshine. I’m sorry if that offends Ladyraxterinok, and I’d hope I’m wrong….
GeriUpNorth
@OzarkHillbilly: Trail’s End was on the Minnesota side in Lake of the Woods County. It burned down in the early 80’s. I grew up there, and a high school friends family owned Trails End.
tybee
@raven: dead thread but i always enjoy that part of preparation for an expedition…
frosty
@Ruckus:
Sounds about right. I was going to keep a logbook when I got the boat and then realized I had roughly 10 hours of repair for every hour of sailing. And that’s with a wooden daysailer with no engine, head, or electrical system! Too depressing
I’m done with the terror myself. Give me flat water and light winds so I can kick back and I’m happy.
Zinsky
Who can like this reptile? I mean, really? What a loathsome creature, this pink-scalped pervert is. Lowest form of life on the planet….
J R in WV
@SiubhanDuinne:
When we lived in Key West, Jimmy Buffet was singing for drinks and tips in bars. Long time ago. Jerry Jeff Walker, too. Was at a party with Jimmy once. Looong time ago.