Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

One of our two political parties is a cult whose leader admires Vladimir Putin.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

FFS people, this was a good thing. take the win.

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

We still have time to mess this up!

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

There is no right way to do the wrong thing.

Imperialist aggressors must be defeated, or the whole world loses.

The lights are all blinking red.

They think we are photo bombing their nice little lives.

People really shouldn’t expect the government to help after they watched the GOP drown it in a bathtub.

Conservatism: there are people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

The press swings at every pitch, we don’t have to.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

Sadly, media malpractice has become standard practice.

Donald Trump found guilty as fuck – May 30, 2024!

It’s easy to sit in safety and prescribe what other people should be doing.

“The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.”

The revolution will be supervised.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

Every reporter and pundit should have to declare if they ever vacationed with a billionaire.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Monday Morning Open Thread: MLK Day

Monday Morning Open Thread: MLK Day

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  1. 1.

    Tony Jay

    Open Thread? Great.

    Reason Eleventy-Billion as to why the BBC’s coverage of American Politics needs to be taken out behind the orphanage and cut until the beasts come panting and hungry from the deep wood.

    John Sopel, BBC North American Editor, last night on TV giving his off-the-cuff theory of what happened in 2016. I’m paraphrasing, but not by much. And bear in mind, he says this in 2018.

    “Donald Trump said a lot of things and had a lot of policies professional media folk like me thought were crazy and stupid, but he gave a voice to the anger a lot of people felt and he still does. No one knew what Hillary Clinton’s policies were. If you went to her website it was a lot of “This is the policy for this minority group” and “This is a policy for this other minority group” but she said nothing about the problems the great mass of people out in the Rust Belt were struggling with.”

    Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the man the BBC pays to understand American politics and explain it to a global audience. A man for whom racism, misogyny and overwhelming media bias are not part of the ‘real’ story.

    The show he was on then went off to a diner to interview a Wingnut ‘comedian’ who thinks Trump is hilarious and absolutely hates “PC Comedy” and the “Liberal Agenda”. I turned it off and played Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag instead. A much more productive way to put off going to bed.

  2. 2.

    JPL

    The NYTimes crossword celebrated MLK today and the civil rights movement. Although it was a life cut short, it was a life well lived.

    @Tony Jay: MSM didn’t cover Hillary’s policy speeches because they found ratings gold in covering the racist pig who threatened journalists at his rallies.

  3. 3.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Laid in bed for hours last night trying to sleep. Finally did. Dreams that were…? Then I woke up. At 2. Currently 12 degrees outside and my hands feel it in here. We’re supposed to see the sun today but I still feel…

    Blech.

  4. 4.

    J R in WV

    @Tony Jay:

    INteresting display of total lack of information on the part of the BBC guy. No mention of all the high ranking Republican members of the campaign and administration who have pleaded guilty to criminal activity associated with the campaign.

    No mention of Russian interference, which also happened in the catastrophic British Brexit election. No mention that Hilliary actually spoke repeatedly about her well defined policy plans and was ignored by press leadership, which preferred to show an empty podium where Trump was going to bloviate, sometime later, maybe.

    No mention of his personal failure to provide accurate coverage of Hillary’s campaign, policies and platform, preferring to instead provide coverage of Trump’s bloviating lies about Hillary’s platform. Guy should be reading the weather alerts for the Cotswalds, not doing real news, obviously a “Maroon” according to Bugs.

    ETA: I’m a retired hermit, computer software nerd, former horse farmer, and builder up a hollow in WV, and I know more about the politics this guy is supposed to be an expert in than he does. What is wrong with this universe?

  6. 6.

    J R in WV

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Sorry the cold is getting to you. It’s 4 here right now, clear as a bell after clouding out the eclipse earlier this evening. I left water dripping last night at the kitchen sink, which has the feed lines most exposed to outdoor temps of all the water lines.

    Now when I install water lines I use PEX plastic, which aren’t damaged by freezing like copper is. Plus new connectors you can slip on and off, they cost more, but the ease of installation, OMG it’s great!

    I’ll be able to go back down to bed in a little while. I’ll need to get up at 4 again tomorrow morning to go to the airport, if they’re still flying Tuesday. So I thought I would stay up for a while when I woke up at 4 this morning. So I’m on the blog again…

    You hang in there. Blech! right back at you.

  7. 7.

    JPL

    @J R in WV: Are you going to the airport for fun?
    It’s 23 here but will warm up to the low forties. That probably sound warm to folks further north, but not to me.

  8. 8.

    Plato

    A Harvard and a Yale psychiatrist on Trump: "He is unimpeded by empathy, duty, or shame and is wedded, in dangerous ways, only to what nurtures his exaggerated self-image … As things stand, his disregard for truth imperils our country and the world." https://t.co/krGNkNNPFv
    — Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) January 21, 2019

  9. 9.

    geg6

    It is freaking three degrees this morning. Lovey flatly refused to even step off the porch. Damn. I am too old for this shit.

    The only good news is that I can completely ignore the Super Bowl this year. Fuck both those teams.

    Oh, and all the main bridges into Pittsburgh are closed due to two loose barges on the Monongahela River. Good thing it’s MLK day and, hopefully, the traffic jams won’t be completely insane.

  10. 10.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @J R in WV:

    I left water dripping last night at the kitchen sink, which has the feed lines most exposed to outdoor temps of all the water lines.

    Same here, but it has to get below zero for multiple nights with single digits during the days before I have to worry about them freezing (which has only happened once) (really good AM sun exposure really helps)

    I hear you on the Pex, I use it for everything these days.The cost seems about the same to me but even if it wasn’t the install is easy as pi.

  11. 11.

    JPL

    @Plato: We all stated the same thing. The only difference was the authors are more articulate. We are in uncharted territory.

  14. 14.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @geg6: Some years back a buddy of mine was coming home from IL just after some barges broke loose on the Mississippi. Before he got to the river an oil filled one hit a bridge (I forget which bridge it hit) and blew up. The whole damn river was on fire as he drove across it. A sight he will never forget.

  17. 17.

    Chyron HR

    But one of my favorite quotes from Doctor King was “Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy.” not any of the stuff about giving the darkies rights, that’s for sure.

    – Vice President Pence, probably

  18. 18.

    Kay

    @Tony Jay:

    Their findings, published in the Columbia Journalism Review, focus on the New York Times’s election coverage. Their starkest discovery: “In just six days, the New York Times ran as many cover stories about Hillary Clinton’s emails as they did about all the policy issues combined in the 69 days leading up to the election.”

    That chart is from a study by the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. It looked at what topics during the campaign received the most coverage between May of 2015 and November of 2016. One of the many interesting conclusions therein is pretty damning for all of us press types:
    Coverage of Trump overwhelmingly outperformed coverage of Clinton. Clinton’s coverage was focused on scandals, while Trump’s coverage focused on his core issues. Attempts by the Clinton campaign to define her campaign on competence, experience, and policy positions were drowned out by coverage of alleged improprieties associated with the Clinton Foundation and emails. Coverage of Trump associated with immigration, jobs, and trade was greater than that on his personal scandals.

    That’s just two. The Washington Post also did an analysis (same conclusion) and so did Nate Silver.

    It’s a fact that none of them covered Clinton on issues. That they’re still lockstep denying it is just embarrassing for their industry.

    They ignored all her issues but the omission that sticks out the most to me is education- Trump is the first President of my adult life who didn’t address education. Interesting oversight, huh? On the part of both media and Trump. Apparently these are not people who struggle with college costs and access, unlike 90% of the rest of us.

  19. 19.

    Immanentize

    3 degrees here near Boston, too.
    Three. Degrees. But the good news is that with wind chill it feels like -6. That will freeze nose hairs.

    I don’t usually worry about the temp., but my car battery has been showing signs of failing. Will the car start? Will it not? I will be testing that out in a half hour when I take the Immp to the train for school.

  21. 21.

    OzarkHillbilly

    That Pats-Cheifs game… Wow. Hate him if you want, there’s no denying just how above and beyond good Brady is, year after year after year.

  23. 23.

    Immanentize

    @Chyron HR:
    It’s become just like the Bible for these jackasses — they find some MLK quote, strip it completely of the original context and meaning, then declare that, SEE?! MLK would support their position. Same process with Blond Jesus.

  24. 24.

    Kay

    @Tony Jay:

    And they do deny it, with this dishonest pretending that people are complaining about them covering the story AT ALL, which was never the complaint, and they know it:

    Some reporters, whenever the question surfaces of whether the scale of email-related coverage outweighed its actual importance, take exception to the notion that it was over the top or out of whack. “She was under FBI investigation as a presumptive party nominee. Not sure how that isn’t a story,” The New York Times’ Maggie Haberman said recently.
    Indeed, the emails were absolutely a story. But how big of a story were they? Not this big:

    And, of course, later we found out Trump was also under investigation. They neglected to cover that- in the case of the NYTimes they ran a story planted by Trump supporters in the FBI specifically denying it- a story they never explained or corrected.

    This is actually the second time they’ve done this- the coverage of Al Gore (led, again, by the NYTimes) was also of poor quality. After that election it was widely discussed and absolutely nothing changed in that industry to address it. In fact, some of the people who produced the lousy work on Al Gore are still media celebrities and make millions of dollars a year.

  30. 30.

    Baud

    @Kay:

    Was she actually under investigation? I thought it was more a “find out what the facts are” investigation at the instigation of Republicans on the Hill.

  34. 34.

    Dr. Ronnie James, D.O.

    @Tony Jay: the fact that so much of the media still clings to this narrative makes me feel like the MSM chuckleheads are actually invested in it, like they *enjoy* being told that they are out of touch from the miserable White Working Class. I mean isn’t that ultimately what luxury is for: separation from mundane human misery? All this self flagellation over “oh, we urban elites are so out of touch, with our Ivy League degrees, our Cronuts, and our attachment parenting!” is actually a weird kind of humblebrag, that reinforces how much more advanced and elevated you are. Like my Grandpa Bob used to say, “it’s like peeing in a blue serge suit: it gives you a warm feeling, and noone notices.”

  35. 35.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    No, she was under investigation. She cooperated fully and they didn’t find anything. It didn’t matter at all. The 500 congressional investigations didn’t matter either. The NYTimes decided to cover the emails to the exclusion of everything else on Clinton, and the rest of the lemmings followed.

    But, we should have known. Because we had Benghazi, which they covered the exact same way. In may ways Benghazi was the template for the emails coverage. Jake Tapper and CNN led that. Laying the groundwork.

    I differ with a lot of Democrats because I remember the Al Gore coverage, which was just as bad. They were so in the tank for Bush they couldn’t come up for air. It was a different time so we didn’t get statistical analysis of the poor quality of the work but I recall watching network news in the middle of that election and thinking “WTF- this is a deliberate smear job”. I hadn’t been aware of it- I didn’t start following politics on the internet until after the 2004 election. That’s how I missed the whole “Bush stole Ohio” controversy. I followed the 2004 election results on the sec of state website :)

  36. 36.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Kay: Remember when trump told us not to elect someone who is under investigation by the FBI on Day 1? Ah, we were so innocent back then.

  37. 37.

    rikyrah

    @OzarkHillbilly:
    It has turned cold here… There is a difference between 20 degrees and 10 degrees with windchill??

    It is time to break out the Eskimo jacket…but, I am not ready to put it on , because it is so heavy.

  39. 39.

    Immanentize

    @rikyrah:
    Sorry, but you gotta go Eskimo in this cold. And wear those gloves.

    And don’t put your tongue on the metal railing.?

  42. 42.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    The single proof point that shows them to be liars on the importance of the emails is how they completely ignore the Trump Administration communications security issues.

    It doesn’t matter. I know that because they don’t cover it with Trump. If these people were actually concerned about “national security” and communications they would be running around with their hair on fire about Team Trump. There aren’t even investigations. They don’t know who Ivanka Trump talks to, what device or methods she uses, or what she says. Kushner brags about being the foreign policy dealmaker. There’s not the slightest interest in how secure his communications methods are. No one gives a shit. This concern was specific to Hillary Clinton.

    But she did break ground. They’re nothing if not aware of their image as diversity minded sophisticates. The next female candidate will have it easier, because if they pull that shit again there will be an internet mob calling them out on it.

  45. 45.

    Lapassionara

    @Kay: I saw a post-Iraq-war analysis the other day that essentially says the war made Iran stronger in the region than it was. That was also argued before the war by those who tried, in vain, to dissuade the Bush administration from its march of folly. This should be a major story. Instead, I saw one reference to it, but nothing else. Of course, I am not reading the effing NYT’s, so maybe it has received coverage there. It is no wonder we are the United States of Amnesia.

  47. 47.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @JPL: If Trent Green hadn’t torn his ACL, would a former grocery store stock boy now be in the HoF?

  50. 50.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    The US came in and took out Iraq.

    Not just that. We made Shiite majority Iraq an ally** of Shiite majority Iran.

    ** ally might be too strong a word, they are definitely much more closely aligned then previously

  51. 51.

    Kay

    @rikyrah:

    The middle son broke up with his GF which means I lose her son. It ended ugly but they talked last night and are trying not to be such douchebags to each other in the course of breaking up so I’m hoping I can remain friends with her and still go see him. I mean “them” :)

    I’m disappointed in my son. I think he should be more careful with the feelings of a 3 year old. That little boy is attached to him, which was inevitable. One of her complaints about him is he is “oblivious” which is, well, true. He’s always been drifty. I could told her that if she had asked, and would have. But, I spent two nights worrying about this and there’s nothing I can do so I’m going to work and I will call her in a week and see if they need anything. She was making payments on a little pickup a relative sold her and the relative doesn’t care if he gets paid – he has many used automobiles- and will give her the truck, so they have transpo anyway. I think the truck is too small and light for kid transport and…obviously I am going to continue to bug this woman forever :)

  52. 52.

    JPL

    @OzarkHillbilly: Definitely not. My son’s response to my morning query was then maybe I wouldn’t have to watch him in a super bowl again. It appears that he’s sick of that crap.

  53. 53.

    SFAW

    @JPL:

    What if Bledsoe didn’t get injured?

    I have been saying for well more than 10 years: Tom Brady should get down on his knees, every fucking night, and thank God for sending him Mo Lewis.

  55. 55.

    Baud

    Vox

    Kamala Harris, a California lawmaker and longtime prosecutor, just announced that she’s running for the Democratic nomination for president, becoming the third sitting senator to make her 2020 ambitions official.

  57. 57.

    MomSense

    @Kay:

    And the thing that makes me want to set trash cans on fire and throw them through the windows at the NYT is that they never even got the emails story right. It wasn’t just the volume of emails coverage – they fucked up the facts.

    I can’t even lift a trash can so I periodically ask them on Twitter what the Russians found in their servers. It must have been good for them to deliver so thoroughly for trump.

  59. 59.

    Ken

    Neither the President nor the Vice President will participate in any public events for MLK day tomorrow

    All things considered, probably for the best. The Pence quote above is bad enough, can you imagine what would happen if they tried for more?

  60. 60.

    SFAW

    I’d say it was cold here, but I’m not sure, because the outdoor (digital) thermometer appears to be broken — it’s reading “0.” Maybe I’ll get my son to go change the batteries.

  62. 62.

    Sab

    Let my dogs out into the backyard. No walks for them: we had a foot plus of snow and a driveway to shovel. We are both in our sixties and I have a less than perfect heart so we shovelled VERY slowly.

    The cocker in his little sweater looked out the back door and said WTF! He plowed on out into the snow and it was up to his shoulders.

    After he had established a path/tunnel through the snow the rottmix tiptoed daintily down the steps, peeed briefly, tiptoed back up the steps and pounded on the door to be let inside.

    Appearances can be deceiving. Sweater-clad cocker spaniel is actually a tough guy. Rottmix is a delicate pearl-clutcher. Who knew.

  63. 63.

    SFAW

    @Ken:

    can you imagine what would happen if they tried for more?

    “If Dr. King were alive today, instead of the ‘I have a dream’ speech, he’d give a ‘Build that yuuuge, bee-yoo-tee-ful Wall’ speech. Right after telling the Fake News media that I’m the least racist president in the history of the world!”

  65. 65.

    Daniel'sBob

    @rikyrah: Layers! Base layer (long undies), fleece jacket, and insulated, windproof hooded parka. Pain to put it all on and take it all off, but it works. 11 below zero predicted here (80 miles West of Chicago) on Thursday.

  66. 66.

    raven

    @HinTN: My brother has a client who is a huge Boston dude and took him to the 18 inning playoff. It looks like he may also take him to the Super Bowl so maybe I’ll get to see him!

  67. 67.

    MomSense

    @Sab:

    We have a thick layer of ice covering the soft snowy center. There is no walking outside for man or beast today. The poor dog went out for a second – her legs all went in different directions so she peed fast and slid back in the house. I may sit and slide over to my car because I really can’t fall again on the ice.

  68. 68.

    J R in WV

    @JPL:

    @J R in WV: Are you going to the airport for fun?
    It’s 23 here but will warm up to the low forties. That probably sound warm to folks further north, but not to me.

    I am optimistically still planning to fly to AZ to spend some time in our winter camp out there. It’s about 5500 elevation in the high desert of SE AZ, about 15 miles east of Tombstone. My cousin intends to fly with, he’s not been out there so there will be hiking and driving around to see things. The Border Country, old mining towns, historic stuff, abandoned stuff, mountains, birds, etc.

    If TSA and the Air Traffic Controllers are still working for free… I’m tempted to take plain white envelopes with $20 bills to pass out to folks who may be or are for sure furloughed. Also wonder if they will still be working for free in 3 weeks when I hope to fly back to WV…

    Crazy, but it wasn’t like this when we bought the tickets, and as long as they (the airlines and the government) are still pretending that everything is normal they aren’t inclined to refund the ticket price.

  76. 76.

    Tony Jay

    @Kay: @J R in WV:

    Yes. All that. It’s 2018. There is no conceivable excuse for the crap that the BBC North American Editor was spewing on that show. He’s not American, he doesn’t work for some faceless conglomerate that benefits from Tax Cuts for the 1%. His job, his – one – job, which he is supposed to be uniquely qualified for by virtue of his being selected for it before every other BBC journalist on the planet, is to look at American politics with independent eyes free of any local agenda and say what is really going on.

    But instead, we get turgid, early-2017 era warmed-over pro-Republican bullshit that could have been scraped from the sole of any randomly selected Politico staffer’s Fall Beige loafer. The condescension and blinkered racism dripping from his lines about checking out the HRC website had me grinding my teeth. “Out of Touch”, “Handouts for Minorities”, “Dismissive of the WWC”, every discredited smear and excuse the American media has squirted out for the last two years to cover its complicity in making Trump happen regurgitated verbatim, like he actually made any effort whatsoever to come to these conclusions himself. It’s Copy and Paste as a work-ethic.

    I’ve said it lots of times, but they just keep on piling on the evidence. Every single senior BBC journalist put on the America beat does the entirely of their ‘work’ by flipping through a copy of the NYT to absorb some Brooksian wisdom, reading the CNN scrolling News bar for five minutes, then copying the latest ‘Hot Take’ from ‘Tiger Beat on the Potomac’, careful to insert the missing letter U wherever necessary (it’s not plagiarism if you write some of it yourself!), before spending the rest of the afternoon waiting nervously in a high-end DC cocktail bar with their wedding ring in their pocket until that nice Russian girl they keep on bumping into ‘accidentally’ arrives for her shift.

    Bah! We deserve better. I’m paying my taxes for ‘better’.

  78. 78.

    MomSense

    In case you missed it, Pompeo celebrated the 40 year anniversary of the release of the hostages in Iran- yesterday. He’s a genius.

  82. 82.

    J R in WV

    @JPL:

    Just 3 weeks this time, wife isn’t interested in going. Cousin is staying a week, so we’ll do tourist things, then I’ll work on the place a little bit, maybe. There’s also a huge mineral/gem show in Tucson, which I used to be way really into, will probably check that out. Tucson is a pretty nice city for urban entertainment, old Spanish neighborhoods, etc.

  83. 83.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @debbie: Try working in -9 some time. ;-) I think that’s why my hands hurt so much in the cold now. They’re getting even with me.

  84. 84.

    SFAW

    @MomSense:

    Then at some point he deleted it and tweeted a new commemoration using the correct 38 years.

    Yeah, the 40 years was to commemorate when ReaganTheTraitor sent people to the Ayatollah, to convince him to hold the hostages until after the 1980 elections. Easy mistake to make, for any of the current batch of traitors.

  86. 86.

    J R in WV

    @Tony Jay:

    You did a pretty great job of putting down his completely inadequate news coverage.

    Looks like that guy took the worst of all the American political coverage, blended it, and skimmed the stuff that rose to the top off for his product. Or perhaps what sank to the bottom after he poured off the fluids.

    No thought or research was devoted to this news product!

  87. 87.

    MomSense

    @SFAW:

    Yup. That’s how many of the comments read on that deleted tweet. Bolton and Pompeo really want to get their war on with Iran.

  88. 88.

    SFAW

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    I think that’s why my hands hurt so much in the cold now.

    Aah, the miracle and joy of cold-weather vasoconstriction. I’ve experienced it once, maybe twice. Not a lot of fun.

  90. 90.

    SFAW

    @J R in WV:
    @Tony Jay:

    Looks like that guy took the worst of all the American political coverage, blended it, and skimmed the stuff that rose to the top off for his product. Or perhaps what sank to the bottom after he poured off the fluids.
    No thought or research was devoted to this news product!

    Question: has anyone ever seen Sopel and Cilizza in the same room, at the same time?

  91. 91.

    Tony Jay

    @Immanentize:

    The Fit will start hitting the Shan later today, I think. May has to come back to Parliament and tell everyone what her Plan B is after her Plan A was sent orbital so quickly it frightened Oumuamua into cutting off communications with Area 51.5. Everyone already knows what it will be, because she’s spent the week telling everyone stupid enough to go into a meeting with her what it will be. It’s Plan A all over again, this time with added sprinkles of fairy dust and leprechaun jelly. Evidently the real ‘plan’ was to get Corbyn to come in for a chat and unleash the briefers blaming him for being, like, totes intransigent and, like, calling her stupid and whatnot. Blame-shifting and finger-pointing is all the Tories have these days. Which is apt, because those were at the core of the Leave campaign they’re now so devoted to. Despite the best efforts of the anti-Corbyn media (which is everyone other than the Islington Courier Evening Edition) that effort died a flatulent death, and now she’s back on the bullseye tuning up her transistors for another chorus of “Strong and Stable. Beep. Brexit means Brexit. Boop. Expel the Browns. Error! Error! Bzzzt! Crackle!”

    As ever, things only happen where Brexit is concerned when the blade meets the nuts. Tory MPs who want to have a future in politics need to have no choice but to vote against No Deal/Bad Deal, even if that means voting – with – Darth Corbyn and the Red Empire, and we’re not at that juncture quite yet.

  93. 93.

    J R in WV

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    It was really fun at first, but then prices went way up for any nice rocks. I still enjoy seeing the rocks, but it’s more like visiting a museum now as the prices are 5 and 6 figures. Used to be able to get a whole dinosaur for that kind of money!

    One guy comes every year to sell his pyritized dinosaur skeletons, preped on matrix, only a handful each year, but they were high 5 figures years ago, and so striking, golden bones on a tan matrix, little critters curled up. I would love to have one, but a Rolls-Royce would be cheaper and more useful, a little.

    Other guys mining tourmaline in Maine come to sell — they actually really struck it rich. While they mined gemstones, their wives ran around to small town banks to rent safe-deposit space for the gems. They had a hard time finding places to put it all. They rent Harleys to tour the mountain drives in Tucson, while not being in Maine winter. Sweet for them!

    Beautiful rocks, tho, all over town, whole hotels booked up for dealer space.

    ETA: when relatively ordinary Illinois Fluorite specimens went from $300 to mid 4 figures, I knew it was time to stop, right then!

  94. 94.

    trnc

    @J R in WV:

    Now when I install water lines I use PEX plastic, which aren’t damaged by freezing like copper is.

    Not inside walls, though, right? I used some in my crawl space when we moved our fridge, but I don’t think code allows the connectors to be used inside walls (at least, not around here) because a leaky connector could go for a while without being detected. If it disconnects completely while you’re gone for the day, insurance may not cover the damage if it isn’t installed per code.

  97. 97.

    Ladyraxterinok

    @Kay: Was it Sommerby who daily monitored the biased smear of Gore?

    A listener to Mike Malloy’s WLS late night talk show said ‘there’s so much ongoing spin on this election Al Gre could win and we’d never know it’!!!

    And of course the newspaper consortium that investigated and examined the FL ballots did find that Gore got the most votes.

    Their result was published 09/12/01!!!

  102. 102.

    Bookeater (formerly JosieJ)

    @Ken:

    I very much prefer silence from Trump than any insincere platitudes he’d spew from his racist little anus of a mouth, and Pence hasn’t got any more of a clue today than he had yesterday. So, yeah: the WH ignoring the holiday suits me just fine.

  104. 104.

    The Midnight Lurker

    Neither the President nor the Vice President will participate in any public events for MLK day tomorrow

    I’m shocked!

    BTW – does S/ = snark?

  105. 105.

    The Midnight Lurker

    I’m going to a MLK celebration today. Then I’m going to a mixer for the local black film festival. And I fully expect to have a wonderful time.

    Somebody should tell Trump/Pence that at a lot of these MLK celebrations they serve hamberders!

  106. 106.

    J R in WV

    @trnc:

    Actually, code is great advice, mostly. But there are big swaths of territory where code isn’t policed at all. We didn’t even have building permits when I built our house. When I built the shop there was a permit/fee, but no inspections ever.

    And in Arizona there was a permit, and I had to have an electrician approved by the local power co-op, but there were no real inspections except for the power installation, which is 100% solar (well, there is a Honda generator for long cloudy spells, but…) and off the grid.

    Oh, yeah, someone came out to be sure the address was properly in place out front, at the end of a 4 mile dead end dirt road through the high desert countryside. I failed that at first, but then fixed it… I think all the PEX connectors inside the walls are crimped, because the guys who did that could see that a crimper and the connectors were so much cheaper than the slip-on reusable shark-bite connectors – but when I had to do the crimping, I bought shark-bite style connectors.

  107. 107.

    J R in WV

    @piratedan:

    Now you’re talking — can’t believe I haven’t already started planning that!!

    Suzanne, you can come down from Phoenix, right?? !!

  108. 108.

    brantl

    Somebody should establish an on-the-street soup kitchen across the street from the White House (for both the poor and federal government workers, who are now the same people), and dare that pinhead to try and shut it down.

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