Well, Trump finally got indicted and arrested. We’ll see what becomes of it, but if the last several years have taught us anything at all, it’s to be patient and keep our expectations low.
The Liberal won the Chicago Mayoral race and the fake moderate lost. The Chicago PD Police union claims that 800 to 1000 members may quit. I say that’s a good start.
The Wisconsin State Supreme Court election is complete, and the Liberal Janet Protasiewicz won. Her opponent’s concession speech is one for the ages.
Christ, what an asshole.
Thanks to Joe Biden’s rejiggering of the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, I am now, as of yesterday morning, DONE with student loan repayment.
We took student loans when we were both in school and had first one, then two kids and I wanted to keep the apartment heated and my kids fed and my GI Bill, helpful as it was, wasn’t cutting it year-round. After years of Navient lying to me about my loans and program eligibility, it all gets wiped away in a year after my previous payments were counted. And they’re going to refund 38 payments. I made 158 when 120 qualifies for forgiveness. So it’s going to save me about 26K, and about 11K back.
Frankly, we need to do this for everybody, public servant or no. Trying to better oneself and one’s lot in life shouldn’t lead to a lifetime of indebtedness before one even begins and there are people who are retiring after 30 years in the workforce and still owing college debt.
I don’t care where you come from, or what your level of education is, or what your trade is. If you can’t see how morally wrong and destructive that is, then I don’t even want to know you.
Seriously, the guy who works 30 years or more and still owes college debt? That would have been me. I can’t say enough how light feel now that weight has been lifted off my shoulders.
Our union, American Federation of Government Employees Local 4016 is doing very well. Four months after recognition, we’re up to 100 dues-paying members, and we haven’t even done our first real membership drive yet.
When I’m asked by people why we have a union and why we think people should join the union, my answer is that a majority of the workforce that was asked voted for one, so THEY think they need a union, and people are coming to us every day. We’re preparing now to bargain our master agreement. We know we won’t get everything we want, but we’ll sure do our damndest to take care of our 954 member bargaining unit. We have members in every state in the union, and every US territory.
Lastly, Freddie is a real pain sometimes. Lucky for him that he’s so damn cute.
Submitted into evidence, the case of Dad vs. Freddie, vandalism and destruction of personal property. pic.twitter.com/RMMgjwYqHm
— Mike Galletly (@galletly_mike) April 4, 2023
eclare
Congrats on the loan payoff, that’s huge!
And as for your dog’s behavior, “I got it from you, dad!”
PJ
Where you been, man? Still working out by the airport?
Alison Rose
I love how Freddie keeps looking up as if to make sure he’s still being filmed. “You getting all this? Sweet.”
rikyrah
Police quit?
FOH
Where else can you be limited education-wise and make $100k after 18 months on the job with a full pension after 20 years?😒😒🤔🤔
Spanky
Glad to see they didn’t change the locks in this place, and your old key still works.
And congrats on debt elimination! ‘Tis indeed a great feeling.
rikyrah
Congratulations on the loans👏🏾👏🏾
Soonergrunt
@PJ: One of my offices I support is out there, but mostly running all over these days.
NaijaGal
Congratulations on the student loan repayment – that’s wonderful!
Freddie clearly knows he’s too adorable to get into trouble.
prostratedragon
Freddie is innocent! See? Freddie is innocent!!
Great news about the debt.
KayInMD (formerly Kay (not the front-pager))
Are you sure Freddie isn’t a cat?
Good to see you again!
The election results are encouraging. Meanwhile Republicans seem to be going full-on fascist – see, e.g., TN Repubs deciding to expel 3 Dem legislators for the “crime” of standing with students who were asking for gun safety legislation. It makes me hopeful that voters are waking up and starting to realize that there aren’t two normal parties anymore; there’s just 1 normal party and one party of dangerous loons.
Madeleine
I’m happy you’re done with loans. Relief and freedom!
CaseyL
Congrats on paying off the student loans! – and getting some money back, that’s aces!
Freddie is adorable. (I wonder why toilet paper exerts such a powerful fascination over dogs and cats.
ETA: My nym got changed somehow. I’m CaseyL, not whatever that gibberish is.
MisterForkbeard
Congrats on the loan payoff – my sister got the same news just a week or two ago and it really is life changing. We need to expand this program.
RaflW
I’m fascinated that a whole block of rural SW Wisconsin counties went Judge Janet. Wondering what the story is there!
satby
Yay for the student loan relief and refund! And Freddie is freaking adorable. I love him!
frosty
My son qualifies for Public Service Loan Forgiveness as a police officer, but every time I look at the numbers, the loan will be paid off in less than 10 years. Sucks, but it just means that it wasn’t a huge loan. If Biden’s $10,000 forgiveness ever comes to pass, that will wipe out what’s left of it. We’ll see.
One of the Many Jens
Congrats on the loans! And oh my heavens, Freddie is so darn cute.
Baud
Wow. Best insomnia ever. Great news about all the election results and your student loans.
Anne Laurie
Freddie: When you’re a star, they let you do it!
And *big* congratulations on closing out those loans!
Betty Cracker
Oh so happy to read about WI election results! Woohoo!
In the matter of Dad vs. Freddie, the jury has reached its verdict, and the fluffball is acquitted of all charges. You are free to go, sir!
Congrats on the loan discharge. I agree we need to rethink education financing — as a society. The current predatory system sucks for the people who are caught up in it, and it doesn’t serve society well either. That’s the part that gets lost in the arguments about “fairness.”
West of the Rockies
For a second, I thought, shit, DeBoer?
frosty
@West of the Rockies: I thought exactly the same thing about Freddie!
Congratulations, Sooner, on being out from under that debt. I hope we can free up a lot more people, too. Oh, and nice to see you here. Drop in more often!
Amir Khalid
@West of the Rockies:
I too had that momentary thought. It gave me the, um, shutters.
AJ of the Mustard Search and Rescue Team
Yes, please don’t scare us with the ambiguous Freddie when we have the ADORABLE Freddie the cutest dog to salve our stressed out souls.
Awesome to get the WI and Chicago results, and great to see your byline again SG.
SectionH
Nice to see you here again! Freddie is OMG cute, as always (I admit to following you over, uhm, there) maybe only partly because of him.
The whole student loan travesty was corrupt from the start. Your story gives me a great deal of satisfaction. Many years ago I was gainfully employed, and trying do double payments on my student loan. Yeah, and so the next thing I knew I getting harassing letters, phone calls (!) about how I was in arrears and they were gonna destroy my credit rating. WTF?
Luckily I was working for a Community Development Agency, and already knew the Don’t Do Anything So Egregious that people complain to their Congresscritters. Because then even Republicans had to pay some attention to the actual people they are supposed to represent. So yeah, that got fixed. And admittedly, the amount of the student loan was embarrassingly small, even given relative salaries. It was long time ago.
Go Unions!
Freddie will grow out of it.
Odie Hugh Manatee
Heya SG! Some home critters have paper issues and the toilet paper holder is a common target for them. Our orange kitty Chuckie will assault every single roll of toilet paper or paper towels he can get his paws on. My wife put in a bathroom cabinet that has two shelves with 6 square bins on them for storing bathroom items. Chuckie found the one for the toilet paper, pulled it out in the middle of the night and completely destroyed three rolls of Charmin. I didn’t get a picture because it was middle of the night when I stumbled into it and I wanted to get back to bed after picking up the mess. He hasn’t noticed the TP holders yet but I have a feeling that might change one day.
We found out about this habit when we discovered that he discovered the package of paper towel rolls in the pantry, pulling two of them out of the package and destroying them. Again in the middle of the night. If I toss a roll down he will side-eye it, turn his head sideways and pounce on it. It’s funny as hell.
Good to see ya around here, SG… 👍
Joey Maloney
@West of the Rockies: @frosty: et al: We have been hanging around this nearly-top-ten-thousand place for waaaay too long.
Ruckus
The Chicago PD Police union claims that 800 to 1000 members may quit. I say that’s a good start.
They have a decent job with good pay and benefits and they think they are going to get another job that’s really any better? Are they going to quit because they likely think they won’t be able to be as big of assholes as they are used to? This seems like a rather unlikely threat although I’d bet if the Chicago PD is near the size that it should be for a city that size I imagine that a number move on rather regularly. Be interesting to know how many leave per month, or year normally. Or is the police union just full of shit? I mean really, how much of their jobs is going to change?
NobodySpecial
If only the CPD shrunk enough they’d be forced to close Homan Square. A boy can dream…
Betty Cracker
I was on the road and in a meeting most of yesterday, so I missed the Trump arrest hoopla. I heard part of Trump’s rambling, whiny, incoherent speech on CNN while scrambling frantically to find the remote, then changed the channel to MSNBC, which wisely declined to carry the stale airing of the grievances live.
Not sure what to make of this strange epoch. It’s satisfying to see Mango Mussolini squirm as he faces a modicum of accountability for the first time in his long, miserable, incredibly destructive and ridiculous life, but I have no confidence he’ll get what he actually deserves, i.e., prison, financial ruin and disgrace.
So, I’m hoping he accidentally does something constructive for this country by becoming the instrument of the Repub Party’s destruction.
Mai Naem mobile
@RaflW: GOTV postcards from WG, Mousebumples and others at BJ ofcourse.
bjacques
@Ruckus: well, as I recall, there was one Chicago cop who got work as a torturer–sorry, enhanced interrogator–at Gitmo, and when the work dried up there, he went on to join the O’Hare Airport police, where he dragged a retired and very confused Vietnamese-American doctor off a plane.
Also, I hear Wagner are hiring. So there’s work out there for thugs.
Cathie from Canada
They’re already talking in Wisconsin about impeaching that judge. Incredible to think that would be the first thing some of their legislators would think of, isn’t it. It just shows how MAGA Republicans have an absolutely profound disrespect for American voters.
We are seeing the same thing with our Conservative parties here in Canada too.
Ruckus
@bjacques:
I know there are good cops. The rule of numbers (I hope that’s the right phrase – it’s been a while since I’ve been in any math class….) would mean that it’s likely that at least some percentage of a group the size of the Chicago PD would actually be rational, reasonable human beings who actually understand and do their jobs properly. OTOH, in any reasonably large group of humans, especially humans with the opportunity to be complete fucking assholes there will also be a sizable number who will be – complete fucking assholes.
When I was in the navy I was on temporary duty with the shore patrol for approximately 6 weeks. Sometimes it was almost impossible to be a better person doing this type of work because some individuals really do not want to be anywhere near normal, rational human beings, be it from drugs/alcohol and/or just an extreme level of complete fucking asshole.
OzarkHillbilly
Good to hear from you Sooner, been too long. Glad to know you are out from under that sisyphean debt load. And the union? The best thing I ever did was join the carpenters.
Chris T.
@Ruckus: I think you’re thinking of the Law of Large Numbers, although it’s not really necessary to invoke that here (IMO anyway).
Ruckus
@Chris T.:
I believe you are correct. I knew what I wrote didn’t sound quite proper.
MazeDancer
So happy to hear of your being released from debt bondage.
And, Union!!!
brantl
Good to see you, SG.
Kristine
Congrats on the loan release!🎉
Jay
Ran into a vatnick today.
Started screaming at a woman (and her kid) on Skytrain for wearing a Ukrainian flag scarf.
Jumped in. Pointed out that it’s all on camera’s, the RCMP and SCIS are all looking for 5th Colulmnists,
He took a punch. Did not go well.
I made him crawl off the platform to the stairs on his belly, (threatened to curb him), pointing out that cops would be waiting below, and he would be deported back to Russia, ( yeah no, just f”ing with him)
an hour out of my day, (Transit Cops, etc), so worth it.
Drag Queen story hour tomorrow, should be fun.
Mousebumples
@RaflW: No research speculation –
I’m in the NE part of the state, but I believe I heard about storms, hail, maybe tornadoes…
@Mai Naem mobile: Haha, thanks for the credit, but I’m not sure that we (Balloon Juice & Voces) had any addresses for that part of the state. #PostcardsToVoters did more of a statewide campaign, however.
Our postcards did help, statewide, however!
The SD-8 race – Jodi Habush Sinykin – is still too close to call, but for a gerrymandered R+5 district (I think that’s the partisan lean?) to be within a percentage point is amazing. I’ll leave the “will they try to impeach XYZ” up to others and bask in the wins for now.
Hangö Kex
re student loan: Yay! :)
I see that he-whose-name-shall-not-be-mentioned has been dragged to court over there, interesting to see what becomes of that.
Meanwhile in Finland: YLE: Pro-Russia hacker group suspected of targeting Finnish parliament, Sanna Marin websites with DoS attack (their idea of welcoming Finland to NATO, apparently, *shakes tiny fist*)
Also: YLE: Sanna Marin to step down as SDP leader (She’s probably had a tough enough ~3.5 years with, among other things, COVID, the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the resulting NATO bid (now completed, still under her watch as she remains as a caretaker PM until the new cabinet is sworn in), so this might be good for her personally).
(In case the cookie gauntlet is in Finnish, you can choose “Vain välttämättömät” for minimal concessions or change language to English using the menu with the itsy globe symbol at the top of the dialog.)
Hangö Kex
@Jay: :\ I’m glad it worked out as well as it apparently (?) did.
Baud
@Ruckus:
I thought they call quit because of vaccine mandates.
lol chikinburd
It appears there’s at least some…potential ambiguity about how Wisconsin’s state constitution provisions for legislators to remove judges and justices. There’s removal by “impeachment” for “civil officers”, requiring only a simple majority of the Assembly in addition to that two-thirds of the Senate, and then there’s removal by “address”, specifically linked to judges and justices, requiring two-thirds across the board. Without belaboring details, the proposition that the state constitution unambiguously allows for the “impeachment” option for justices would seem anything but a lead-pipe cinch, no matter what’s in all those PDFs and textwalls we may be asked to read.
And none of the words in said textwalls are going to have effect one on Republican action in any event — they’ll do what they want and call it legal, and what all those law-words will “mean” will be decided in the public conversation by the usual “nuh-uh” contest. In other words, a key dimension in whatever impeachment struggle there’s about to be is going to be this rhetorical battle about this messy-ass document, and discipline with regard to said battle is going to be a good idea.
This is to say that there should be some circle of hell reserved for alleged friends-of-Democrats who preemptively cede the ground of said battle for no visible benefit other than Being Right On The Internet. Which is to say I’ve seen that tonight, thankfully not yet on this almost-top-10,000 blog, but I’ve seen it elsewhere, and, Christ. In lieu of appropriately kinetic response, “shut up, nerd” will have to do for them.
Betty Cracker
Check out this maroon!
Looks like he ran over a skateboard, which flipped and caused him to eat pavement.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
According to a random redditor, a troll performance artist, not a true protester.
https://www.reddit.com/r/PublicFreakout/comments/12c5ffq/qanon_shaman_vs_sneak_attack_from_a_skateboard/jf068hw/
Hangö Kex
@Betty Cracker: Ow.
Betty Cracker
@Baud: Woof. He might want to rethink that shtick!
Baud
That Dan Kelly speech MJ is showing is proof positive that WI made the right choice.
Betty Cracker
@Baud: Does he admit he lost?
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
The MJ crew called it a concession speech, but Kelly apparently never called Janet.
Geminid
@Baud: Pall Vallas, on the other hand, called Chicago Mayor-elect Brandon Marshall at 10:45 last night and in effect conceded. He says he does not want to see Chigago further divided.
BruceFromOhio
Always good to hear from you, SG. As one who took years to pay off a modest loan burden I say HUZZAH and well done by all, loan forgiveness on college debt is no-brainer. Congrats on the refund, too!
Oh, Freddie. Woe to them that gotta go when you’ve been in the head too long.
lowtechcyclist
@KayInMD (formerly Kay (not the front-pager)):
Yeah, that’s what I was thinking too! If there are any cats in the Soonergrunt household, they’re going “hey, you’re horning in on our remit, buster!”
And if there aren’t any, clearly Freddie is trying to fill the gap.
Congrats on your freedom from student loans, Soonergrunt! That’s a BFD, and huge props to Biden for making it happen!!
Looks like we came up short on SD-8, but we won the big one in Wisconsin!
Baud
@Geminid:
The worst Democrat is better than the best Republican.
Betty Cracker
@Baud: From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:
Squeal louder, sore loser pig!
Geminid
@Baud: Kelly disparaged Ms. Protasiewicz personally and whined about her campaigns “rancid lies.” It was a classless, discreditable performance.
BethanyAnne
I don’t know if it’s been shared here or not, but I loved this thread a couple of days ago. It’s a “bad volume control UI” contest.
https://twitter.com/0xDesigner/status/1642554817590566915
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
@Geminid:
I’m so old, I remember when pundits chastised Dems for incivility.
Chief Oshkosh
@RaflW: Lots of strong women involved in the dairy industry?
I’m amazed that Rock County, with Janesville as it’s largest city (home of Paul Ryan, the zombie-eyed granny-starver) voted for the progressive.
Baud
@Chief Oshkosh:
Probably. Cows are massive.
Hangö Kex
@BethanyAnne: Thanks. :) Those were delightfully bad.
Betty Cracker
@Baud: I also remember 12 hours ago! The tone police were out in force yesterday, scolding anyone who cracked a smile about the Trumpuppance. Fuck that noise; I celebrated with two margaritas and many immoderate guffaws! ;-)
Hangö Kex
@Baud: I know what you mean: looking back it feels like the megalithic era was just a couple of years ago.
prostratedragon
Wonder if it’s true that he said something incredulous like, “You’re really putting me under arrest?!” at the DA’s office.
Baud
@Hangö Kex:
More like MAGAlithic.
Geminid
Virginia will have at least one interesting Democratic State Senate primary this June. Controversial State Senator Joe Morrisey faces a challenge from former Delegate Lushresce(sp?) Aird. Six Democratic Senators, all women, have endorsed Aird over the unreliable Morrisey. He won the Petersburg-based district in 2019 by beating an incumbent in the primary.
There is another interesting (to me) primary contest in a Charlottesville based Senate district. Up-and-comer Delegate Sally Hudson squares off against old warhorse Creigh Deeds, the Democratic nominee for Governor in 2009 (he lost a close race to Bob McDonnell). The old district ran from Charlottesville to Rockbridge County, Deed’s home. The special masters drawing the new district map lopped off Rockbridge, so Deeds has moved to the Charlottesville-Albemarle area.
Hangö Kex
@Baud: But what then, is a MAGAlith? A certain building between between East 56th and 57th Streets in New York?
Lyrebird
@Hangö Kex: Nice.
You are contributing to my stereotype of Finns, since the only ones I know professionally are linguists.
Credit to @Baud: too of course.
MelissaM
A creature that cute can NOT be guilty! #FreeFreddie!
NotMax
BTW, to those so inclined, a Happy Passover this evening.
kindness
Good news on the student loans. I had taken out about $75K in loans for undergrad through graduate school. I was paying $1K a month for about 10 years without any real drop in the principle and it looked like I was going to do so for the rest of my life. Then a family member died and I got a small chunk of coin. Paid the whole thing off the next month. That was 12 years ago. I don’t feel the least bit bad that others can have their loans wiped under President Uncle Joe’s program. I applaud that others are able to do it honestly.
Freddie is adorable, btw.
way2blue
Freddie is adorable. Can I have one too? (Currently hosting my daughter’s rescue cat who’s afraid of her own shadow. But would love to have a little moppet in my life… )
Manyakitty
@NotMax: thanks. Got my cake in the oven and eggs hard boiled. Ready to land at my cousin’s house so she can do the hard work of hosting.
They tried to kill us, we survived. Let’s eat!