Blame it on the dog…
that's the perfect thanksgiving conversation https://t.co/BQbglddJGN
— flglmn (@flglmn) November 23, 2023
Best Thanksgiving headline ever? pic.twitter.com/V1ajtPlR2E
— Eric Boehm (@EricBoehm87) November 23, 2023
(Coolidge did not, in fact, eat that racoon. The First Couple named her Rebecca, and kept her as a pet.)
Happy Thanksgiving https://t.co/yiwnNF2tsW
— Pinboard (@Pinboard) November 23, 2023
Must be nice, when the whole world revolves around *you*:
I used to think QAnon was nutty. Then I heard about the Black Friday Conspiracy.
Seriously, extremists are certifiable.
— DCPetterson (@dcpetterson) November 24, 2023
See, Biden forced Israel and Hamas to agree to a temporary ceasefire and to exchange prisoners RIGHT NOW, at this moment, to prevent a nationwide boycott of retailers on Black Friday which was poised to protest the lack of a ceasefire–because Biden is (gasp!) an evil capitalist
— DCPetterson (@dcpetterson) November 24, 2023
have these kids ever seen what black friday shoppers look like? that gleam in their eye? that determination that nothing will stand in their way?
a middle aged lady named Doris is gonna take them out if they get between her and that new microwave on sale. https://t.co/ypMi9KbG5v
— Florida Chris (@chrislongview) November 23, 2023
(I assume this is mostly a propaganda campaign, intended to keep people away… but there may be a few dedicated DSA kiddies from the gentrifying suburbs who actually show up at the mall, only to discover that the average Black Friday shopper has very little sympathy for the political styling of ‘actionists’… )
Odie Hugh Manatee
I would pay to see the DSA kiddies getting mowed down by rampaging shoppers looking for a bargain. There would be puddles of DSA goo left where they were stomped into the ground…lol
NotMax
Pleasant and laid back the best terms to describe the Zoom yesterday. Cheerful gathering
Rusty
Sending a live raccoon (or a dead one, maybe even more!) to the president today would get you at least a long visit from the secret service. Maybe Commander having a friend however might help with that biting issue.
Baud
I blame Biden for the madhouse at the mall today.
Geminid
@Odie Hugh Manatee: Gonna be Black and Blue Friday for some people.
satby
Well, just as my DiL said, whatever bug this was had a two day duration. Started Wednesday, all of yesterday, and now just hints that I’m not back to 100% yet. Since I never go out on Black Friday, I will be puttering around getting ready for Small Business Saturday at the market. Fortunately not nearly as frenetic.
Baud
@satby:
Glad you’re feeling better.
Baud
The only thing missing from that conspiracy theory is that fact that Biden did all that while senile.
NotMax
@Baud
And o-o-o-o-ol-l-l-d!
Geminid
Even though there there is not a Knesset election in prospect, Israeli polling outfits frequently poll party preferences in order to measure changes is public opinion. The Times of Israel just reported on a poll showing Prime Minister Netanyahu’s Likud party falling from 32 Knesset seats to 18, and the National Unity party led Benny Gantz rising from 12 seats to 43.
Overall, the 4 parties in Netanyahu’s original coaltion would drop from 64 to 41 seats, Among opposition parties, the dovish Meretz party would rise from zero members to six, Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid party would lose almost half its seats, and once-mighty Labor would be blanked. Even Yesh Atid voters favor Gantz over Lapid when asked their preference for Prime Minister. This may reflect a belief that in last November’s election, the tactics of Lapid and Labor’s leader contributed to Netanyahu’s unexpected win.
While Netanyahu is not required by law to hold elections until 2026, many Israeli politicians and observers believe that an election is likely next year.
NotMax
Very much like the retro modern design, but the price is redonkulous. FYI the suggested retail for the model in the short video is $500.
satby
@Baud: Thanks. Me too 😉
Baud
@Geminid:
Depends on whether one of the parties in his coalition falters, no? They could decide to hang together.
Princess
Hard for me to see an Israeli election next year. Best chance to oust Netanyahu is for Likud to dump him, break the current coalition and form a new one that does not include convicted terrorists.
Meanwhile the centre right parties in NL sound like they’re al lining up to form a coalition with Wilders at the head. There are not enough centre/left seats to stop it.
Geminid
Yesterday Politico published an article about Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman and his firm support of Israel in its war against Hamas. Pro-Palestinian activists are dismayed that Fetterman’s typical “in your face” posture has been turned against them.
Critics claim he is simply responding to campaign donations from groups like Democratic Majority for Israel, but the reporter said that then-Lt. Governor Fetterman’s reaction to Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue shootings played a big role in his current position.
Some (myself included) could argue that Fetterman’s posture towards this war serves the Palestinian people’s long-term interests better than that of their self-proclaimed allies in the West. I have seen Arabs including Palestinians argue this.
Geminid
@Baud: Yes, the instinct for coalition parties to hang together works against a new election or a no-confidence vote. But I see knowledeable Israeli observers and politicians (including coalition MKs) saying they believe that one way or another, Netanyahu will be toppled next year if not before.
David 🌈 ☘The Establishments☘🌈 Koch
If DSA wants to make themselves useful they can do something important like hold all night protests at the hotel housing Ohio State’s football team, so they don’t get any sleep tonight.
Central Planning
Maybe 15 years ago, I got up early for a Black Friday event. I went to stand in line at the local OfficeMax (out of business, now OfficeDepot). I wanted to get some hard drives or something like that. I didn’t really need them, but the price was better than the normal pricing.
I got there about 15 minutes before the doors opened and the line of people was pretty long – it went across the front of the building and I ended up in front of the next building over. It was cold outside but I was prepared for that so it wasn’t bad.
The doors open, in just a minute or two everyone has calmly filed inside. I find the hard drives, check out the other technology stuff on sale and go to checkout. I spent maybe 5 minutes in the technology section.
I get in line and it seems like there are 100 people waiting to check out. I wait there, not moving for a few minutes and realize the line isn’t moving fast and that the money I would save really isn’t worth my time. I put the drives back on the shelf and I walk out the door.
I went back later that day to try again (only if it looks empty). The parking lot is pretty much empty. The store was basically empty. The drives were still there, still at the Black Friday price. I completed the whole thing in a few minutes.
That was the first and last time I’ve done a Black Friday event.
montanareddog
@Princess:
It is a horrible situation. It is understandable and traditional that a party with such a large lead over the others gets the first attemot to try and form a coalition. And preventing that would be a huge slap in the face to the 1/4 of Dutch voters who chose the PVV. But I do not see how the centre right parties could compromise with the PVV, who want to ban the Qur’an, the building of mosques and the wearing of headscarves in public buildings (which would break the constitutional protection of freedom of religion) and a referendum on EU membership.
Wilders as Prime Minister would be a disaster. But sidelining him and his voters would also be a disaster for the already very low level of trust in the government, and risks radicalising even more people. I don’t see a good way out of this.
Frankensteinbeck
@Princess:
Netenyahu is wildly unpopular within Likud right now. These are some of the most-Israel First, pro-security voters. If Netenyahu hadn’t moved the army to the West Bank and ignored warnings about possible trouble, this wouldn’t have happened, and all of Israel knows it.
Geminid
@Central Planning: My only Black Friday purchase ever was a folding, extendible ladder that I bought at Harbor Freight for $149. There were a lot of other customers, but the ladder was definitely worth the wait.
And the weight also; I figure the aluminum has a scrap value of at least $30.
Central Planning
@Geminid:
It’s probably worth more now than when you bought it. Next stop: gold!
Geminid
@montanareddog: The headscarve question has played out differently in Turkiye. That nation’s hyper-secularist institutions used to discourage the wearing of headscarves in public places. As recently as 2002, a religiously observant university student decided to wear a scarve at her final exam and got a 6-month jail sentence for disturbing the peace. Now students, civil servants and visitors to government offices can wear scarves if they so choose.
This year I saw a story about a new Turkish Provincial Governor. Pictures showed a lady in a nice turquoise dress with matching scarve, reviewing provincial police officers. They were all saluting, but twenty years ago they could have arrested her.
Geminid
@Central Planning: Gold! One of my ambitions for 2024 is to drive down to a place near Greensboro that gives gold panning lessons. I understand the principles involved, but I want to see them work at first hand. They set customers up with a bucket of pay dirt or take them to a stream with pannable gold.
There’s gold in the Old North State! In the 19th, enough gold was mined in North Carolina to support a U.S. Mint in Charlotte and a private mint at Rutherfordtown.
Once I’ve gone to panning school, the plan is try my hand at local sites, starting with Swift Run. It passes 150 feet from my driveway, maybe 10 miles from its source near Swift Run Gap. I think a little bit of gold washes off the Blue Ridge.
Virginia has a “gold belt” that runs about 40 miles east of the mountains, so I would also prospect on the Slate River in Buckingham County, and the creeks downstream of a hamlet there named Gold Hill. Before the Second World War, Virginia had over 40 small gold mines and many were in Buckingham. Then the mines were shut down as a nonessential industry and the miners put to work on farms or in defense plants. Streams erode those sites and they must collect at least a little gold.
This would be more of a summertime hobby, an excuse to wade around creeks in July and August.
Betsy
If anyone is named Doris, they are sure no longer middle-aged.
The top end of GenX is 58 right now, and they are named Tiphonee and Jennifer and Kevin and Miguel.
StringOnAStick
@Geminid: Good panning is fun, just be sure you aren’t jumping someone’s claim. Yes, I know it sounds like something out of a movie but it’s a real thing and people who own claims can get to pulling guns angry pretty fast over that sort of thing.
Betsy
@Geminid: Ahh, Rutherfordton!
Be sure to pronounce it “Ruv-den” or they’ll know you’re from OOT.
kalakal
Only ever been ‘shopping’ on Black Friday once.
We went to the local animal shelter thinking it would be quiet as all the nutters would be indulging in a retail frenzy.
Queue was round the block. Turned out they were reducing the adoption fee by 50% if your beastie of choice had the slightest speck of black ( pupils of eyes included) . Came home with Burma, 22 lbs of the most loveable cat
WaterGirl
Um, no thank you?
Soprano2
@Princess: It’s amazing to see what fear of darker-skinned people will do to white people. I guarantee none of this would be happening in NL if all the immigrants were from Ukraine or another majority-white country.
Ken
… it’s a hollow shell with one active “anchor” store and a few dozen smaller stores grimly hanging on.
BellyCat
Chaos agents chaotically seek to sow chaos.
They won’t stop until every reliable aspect of society and all traditions are infected with irrational fear.
Stay tuned for a concocted Christmas and New Year’s panic coming soon to a Fox channel near you!
Geminid
@StringOnAStick: I will also need to watch out for angry hellgramite fishermen. Hellgramites fetch good money as bass bait, and someone might react badly if they found me churning up their favorite hellgramite bed.
Soprano2
@Ken: Our mall is actuality quite healthy. It’s not like it was 20 years ago, but I still wouldn’t go there today. I’m going to Menard’s after Jazzercise at 8:30, wish me luck.
PJ
@Geminid: When I was is in Turkey 19 years ago, I saw tons of women wearing hijabs, many more in rural areas (where it seemed like almost all the women wore one) than in Istanbul, but still plenty of women in Istanbul wearing them, too. Islamism was on the rise then, and, of course, has been fully embraced by Erdogan now.
Miss Bianca
@Soprano2: We were at the neighbors’ for Thanksgiving and suddenly one of them went bug-eyed about the immigrant hordes swarming over our OPEN BORDER!! 10,000 PER DAY! BRINGING ALL THEIR DIRT AND DISEASE AND BABY-RAPING WITH THEM!!
She was not talking about the Canadian border.
Should have channelled my inner Leslie Jones and just shut that shit down instead of trying to engage. Oh, well. I was just so fucking gobsmacked by the sheer “DUSKY HORDE PANIC OH NOES” that I couldn’t help myself.
No lasting hard feelings, I suspect, but mayhap I’ll find an excuse to do Thanksgiving elsehow next year…
RepubAnon
@Miss Bianca: Perhaps your neighbor is part Cherokee…
Gvg
I have had several fun black fridays in the past but its pretty boring nowadays. The mall is dying, and walmart this morning had fewer people than a normal weekday afternoon. Also i figured out how to find the dvds on black friday sale that you used to have to sort through large bins in person. I can do it online, still random order, but find my bargins and have them mailed.
My best score was an $89 bounce house for toddlers that we could blow up in the garage in cold weather when the active little boys were driving us crazy and it was already dark. They screamed and bounced. We sat in lawn chairs with blankets. Some of the best money we ever spent.
Anonymous At Work
I have no words for the conspiracy. None. I cannot even.
No, wait. Found some: The NFL doesn’t have the strength of personnel to blockade a single mall on Black Friday. So, yeah, a handful of college students? Sure.
sab
@Betsy: There were always at least three other girls with my first name in classes all through school.
Now when I leave my name at a restaurant or whatever waiting list I have to spell it.
Husband’s is always popular. Get yourself named after an Apostle or somebody St. Paul wrote lots of letters too. Not helpful for women whose parents don’t want to name them Mary.