Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

75% of people clapping liked the show!

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

There is no compromise when it comes to body autonomy. You either have it or you do not.

This isn’t Democrats spending madly. This is government catching up.

Following reporting rules is only for the little people, apparently.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

They don’t have outfits that big. nor codpieces that small.

We will not go back.

“Until such time as the world ends, we will act as though it intends to spin on.”

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. keep building.

We can’t confuse what’s necessary to win elections with the policies that we want to implement when we do.

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires.

The fundamental promise of conservatism all over the world is a return to an idealized past that never existed.

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

Republicans: The threats are dire, but my tickets are non-refundable!

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

You cannot love your country only when you win.

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

Stop using mental illness to avoid talking about armed white supremacy.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

“In this country American means white. everybody else has to hyphenate.”

Balloon Juice, where there is always someone who will say you’re doing it wrong.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Palate Cleanser

Palate Cleanser

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I will never tire of watching Tim Walz and his Scout. He has a ’79, and I’m shocked that he found one with a 345 V-8 that still works. From personal experience, there’s nothing like being 16 and driving that overpowered death trap waaay too fast. They cut the actual fix (to the cruise control) but it doesn’t matter, because there are probably 100 of these still running today, and that’s a high estimate.

A lot of people point out that Walz’ “dad energy” is pretty strong. I can see how he was a good coach, teacher, and sergeant in the Guard. In the video above, he’s really passionate about how you can tell if someone is serious about car maintenance by looking at the air cleaner. When he was on Subway Takes with Kareem, he had a pretty serious riff on home gutter maintenance. Since my last post was about shitty men (and a shitty woman), it’s nice to see a guy who puts his time and energy into something constructive.

If you like watching Walz talk about cars, here’s another video.

Reader Interactions

119Comments

  5. 5.

    JCJ

    Indeed a palate cleanser.  I just spoke with a patient whose family member was wearing a whole bunch of Trump 2024 clothing, including socks!  I needed to see a decent human after that.

  6. 6.

    Jeffro

    such an awesome video!

    here’s an awesome tweet about this week’s “events”:

    the october surprises are blossoming in september, due to climate change

    so true!

  7. 7.

    Lyrebird

    Since my last post was about shitty men (and a shitty woman), it’s nice to see a guy who puts his time and energy into something constructive.

    YES!!!  So thankful that more and more voters are shifting to or sticking by

    DECENT HUMAN BEINGS

    who are also not fascists.

  8. 8.

    NutmegAgain

    I no longer have an old American vehicle to fix*, but this did remind me to change the air filter on my furnace. Thanks Gov Walz!

    *I had a 1966 Ford F150 with a straight six, but the best part was the pneumatic suspension. Great truck!

  9. 9.

    artem1s

    It makes me a little sad that like Biden, Walz won’t be allowed to drive his own vehicle once he’s elected VP. But on the balance I think he’d say it was worth it to get to serve his country as Harris’ VP.​

  12. 12.

    Flanders Other Neighbor

    I just replaced the air filter (among other things) in my ’03 BMW last weekend.  No rust on the west coast, so I just keep fixing it as needed.  Pro tip about older Beemers: the German engineering is often somewhat strange and not always bullet-proof, but once you figure out how it’s put together, repairs can be fairly easy.  And like the IH V8s, the BMW inline six is hard to kill.  This weekend the ’08 BMW moto gets a rear new tire and final drive service.  And again, no help needed.

    My coworkers today compared me to Tim Walz because of this video.  I’m honored.

  16. 16.

    BR

    @Baud:

    Great to hear. Yeah, I have been wondering if the polls that say Dem enthusiasm is higher than GOP enthusiasm would show up in hard results like turnout, and this sort of thing is the closest we’ll get to that kind of data.

  18. 18.

    sixthdoctor

    Just like Obama’s pick of Biden and Biden’s pick of Harris were positive indicators of their sense and good judgment, so was Kamala Harris’s pick of VP in Tim Walz.

  19. 19.

    eclare

    How has Walz stayed under the radar for so long?  The guy has such political talent and principles combined.

    My experience as a kid with my friends and relatives in the back of an IH Travelall was so fun.  No seat belts, so the area was a small, enclosed playground.

  21. 21.

    Mousebumples

    @BR: likely voter models will also get a shove if a respondent says, “I’ve already cast my ballot for…”

    Even if they’re a first time voter, or irregular voter who might otherwise get screened out of the LV filter, that’s a fact that can’t be disputed.

  22. 22.

    Mousebumples

    Posted downstairs, but it’s on topic, so I’ll reup –

    https://bsky.app/profile/petridishes.bsky.social/post/3l4m2qtsekh2z

    Unearthed Hot Dish Forum Posts By Tim Walz Could Shake Up Race https://wapo.st/3XNUip0

     

    https://bsky.app/profile/hilzoy.bsky.social/post/3l4m3mlenl32d

    “The user DarthTater has for more than a decade offered compliments (sometimes accompanied by a flame emoji) under every single photo uploaded to the site for hot dish appreciators.”

    🤗

  25. 25.

    eclare

    @Mousebumples:

    Alexandra Petri is such a treasure.  So many funny and accurate slams in that article.

    I hope someone shows this article to Walz, I bet he would appreciate it!

  27. 27.

    Scout211

    It’s a feel good Friday when Elon gets sued yet again.

    The maker of the party game Cards Against Humanity has sued Elon Musk’s SpaceX accusing it of trespassing on and damaging company-owned property in Texas.

    The lawsuit, filed Thursday in Texas court, asks for $15 million to cover damages including what the company calls the destruction of natural vegetation.

    The dispute involves a plot of vacant land near Brownsville, Texas, far from the Cards Against Humanity corporate headquarters in Chicago. The game maker bought the land in 2017 in what it said was a stunt to obstruct the plan by then-President Donald Trump to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. No wall was ever built on the property, where the company keeps a “No Trespassing” sign, according to the company.

    But the land is near SpaceX’s operations, known as Starbase, and according to the lawsuit, SpaceX has been using the land without permission for about six months as a staging area for construction: clearing vegetation, parking vehicles, storing gravel and running generators.

    “CAH acquired the Property for the sole purpose of ensuring that it would stay that way,” the lawsuit says.

    “SpaceX’s abuse of this Property has not only destroyed its natural condition, but has also caused even greater harm to CAH by virtue of the damage it has caused to CAH’s relationship with its paying supporters,”  it says.

    Cards Against Humanity said it bought the land after 150,000 people each paid $15 toward a crowdfunding effort. The “politically incorrect” card game also got its start with crowdfunding in 2010. The company said that if it succeeds in the lawsuit, it will pass any money received onto the original 150,000 donors, up to $100 a person.
    . . .
    Cards Against Humanity complained to SpaceX about the alleged trespassing and damage, according to a website the game maker set up devoted to the lawsuit. The company said SpaceX responded with a “lowball offer” to buy the land “for less than half” its value, with a 12-hour deadline to accept. Cards Against Humanity said it rejected the offer.

    The company also said it would “accept Twitter.com as compensation,” referring to the social media app Musk bought in 2022 and renamed X.

  28. 28.

    Matt McIrvin

    When I was making a zillion business trips between Boston and Boise, at one point one of my fellow software engineers got a replacement tailgate for a Scout from some guy in Boise, wrapped it in cardboard and took it back on the plane as carryon luggage. I think that was before 9/11 but he still had an interesting time getting it through security.

  31. 31.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @Mousebumples: The epilogue is equally wonderful.

    Update: The website HotOrNotDish.net did not actually exist at the time of publication but has since been set up by an anonymous hot-dish fan to redirect users to Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign website after first showering them with Tater Tots. The Post is not responsible for the website — not even, alas, the tots.

    I just love our side. We’re all joyful warriors!
    And as Doug Emhoff said, a joyful warrior is still a warrior!

  33. 33.

    Ruckus

    Tim Walz is like a buddy, rather than a pompous, arrogant, jackass, like shitforbrains.

    He’s a down home, likable, normal human. He’s not here to line his pockets or have people standing around him lying to him about how great he is, like shitforbrains. He’s not hateful of others because they know more, understand more, are liked a hell of a lot more than shitforbrains. He’s a leader type of guy, not someone who needs a room full of suck ups to boost his abilities by lying to his dumb ass.

    IOW he isn’t anything like shitforbrains, he’s basically the diametric opposite.

  34. 34.

    Gloria DryGarden

    I opened an email from a democrat campaign today that said it’s basically tied in the polls, Harris v TCFG. Very horrible feeling. How dare my side try to scre the fuck out of me, and help me feel depressed, to get me to send $.

    i get that republicans have been outspending democrats in swing states. I get it that Obama raised twice the 500 m Harris has raised, so more $ is needed.

    But if polls are still tied, I just want to go back to bed for a week. Not the best strategy. I need a patron saint to donate oodles of money on my behalf, as I’ve still been underemployed.

  35. 35.

    jonas

    Meanwhile The Onion is having an absolute field day with Mark Robinson:

    Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson: ‘We All Have Crazy Ideas About Slavery When We’re Horny’

  38. 38.

    KatKapCC

    He definitely has “Dad energy”, and I bet it probably meant so much in teaching and coaching because he seems like the kind of man who is so easy to approach with whatever problem you might be having. That a kid would know he would never make them feel bad, never talk down to them or embarrass them, and would do whatever he could to help them through a rough time.

    Whereas if a kid went to Vance to say he felt bad about not being great at basketball or something, Vance would probably just say “When did you first see a basketball? Okay great. Have a good day and make sure to tell your female classmates that they are nothing but walking uteruses.”

  42. 42.

    Salty Sam

    I posted in the comments a couple of days ago about how my Minnesota brother-in-law has broken up with his conspiracy addled GF, but not before she “turned” him to the Dark Path.  He had always been strongly apolitical, “not a dimes worth of difference” kind of guy- now he’s all in on “Dems destroying the country”, etc.

    But here’s the thing- if you got Tim Walz to drop a few pounds, and keep a cigarette hanging from his lip at all times, that would be my BIL John in that video.  John can repair any mechanical device ever made, and with rudimentary tools.  He has grease permanently under his fingernails.  He is a hockey coach. He shovels his neighbors walk after a blizzard.

    Imma send him this video- it might make a difference.

    ETA- he is devoted to his daughter.  Salty Spouse brought up abortion bans and women’s autonomy, and it stopped him in his tracks.  He muttered, “yeaaah, that’s not so good.” in a strong Minnesota accent.

  43. 43.

    KatKapCC

    Teamster guy speaking at the Harris rally in Madison :D I love how many of them are giving little eff yous to what’s-his-name.

  44. 44.

    Gloria DryGarden

    I called my political oriented buddy who is driving back home to Georgia tonight, and I started running out comments in my best southern accent about how, did they eat cats and dogs Down there, or perhaps did more heinous things like let women die from miscarriages, hemmorages, and ectopic pregnancies… He enjoys my sarcasm, so I’m happy to bring it.

    ( now I know nobody in the country is eating other people’s pets! The dogs and cats are safe, but women aren’t….

    I also heard project 2025 tries to make it harder for married women to vote if their married name isn’t matching their birth certificate. Sheesh)

    A friend showed me a video that said in Alabama they’re testing women before they get on a plane, and that if they’re pregnant they can’t leave the state. And that teens not on their period also can’t leave. Seems a little far fetched, and I have no idea how to check it. It was one of those short videos. Does anyone know anything about this?

    i need to go watch this Tim walz car care and home maintenance video. Has he got a whole you tube channel ?  I probably need an air filter myself. Or at least, I need to cleanse my palate.

    here in Denver it’s 85, dropping to 70 tomorrow, 65 ish Sunday, with rain, actual rain, maybe half an inch or more. Bye bye summer. See you again in a week.

  45. 45.

    Gloria DryGarden

    @zhena gogolia: yes. WE HAVE TO WIN.

    We absolutely, totally have to fucking win.

    I hate how dirty they’re making it, posting lies for attention, and admitting it, harming whole communities.

  46. 46.

    Salty Sam

    @Gloria DryGarden: I opened an email from a democrat campaign today that said it’s basically tied in the polls, Harris v TCFG. Very horrible feeling. How dare my side try to scre the fuck out of me, and help me feel depressed, to get me to send $.

    How do you know it is really a Dem outfit?

    I have noticed a shift in media reporting in the last day or so-  it seems to me they are doing their best to act as a “cooler” for Dem enthusiasm.  “Polls show neck and neck race!”  “Repub county election boards will cancel your vote!”   NPR has finally dropped the inflation scare news, but they are all in on “Dem efforts are futile”.

    IT IS BULLSHIT!   IGNORE IT!

    It’s nothing but the Wicked Witch of the West on her broomstick, skywriting “SURRENDER DOROTHY!”

  47. 47.

    Another Scott

    That video is brilliant.

    He mentions the cruise control working via vacuum.  My mom’s 1970 GTO had cruise control that worked the same way.

    My dad had a 1955 Chevy Bel Aire that had a vacuum windshield wiper motor.  Brilliant design for driving in a rainstorm going up hill in the mountains.  :-/

    Vacuum – is there anything it can’t do?? seemed to be the Big Three’s thinking back in those days…

    Thanks!

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  51. 51.

    BethanyAnne

    @zhena gogolia: Yeah, there are merit badges that teach several things that you don’t actually want Scouts doing. One of the fathers in my troop had a private plane, and taught aviation merit badge the year before I joined. He vastly enhanced the curriculum. Officially, the Scouts end up sitting in the copilot seat for a takeoff and landing. In his version, he actually taught and had the boys each do a takeoff and landing from the copilot seat.

  52. 52.

    Mousebumples

    @Gloria DryGarden: But if polls are still tied, I just want to go back to bed for a week. Not the best strategy. I need a patron saint to donate oodles of money on my behalf, as I’ve still been underemployed.

    They want money so they have incentive to show you the closest polls.

    I prefer to spend my nervous anxious energy doing GOTV (postcards!). But that’s me. 😊

  53. 53.

    TBone

    @NutmegAgain: I still have a 2001 Chevy Tracker that has pepper and great A/C!  A little maintenance goes a looooing way 😊

    Hubby gave it to me when first we met to replace my old Civic that was still running but too ugly for him to bear (it got dappled).

  54. 54.

    Redshift

    I love that it’s also a demonstration of how to talk to your guy friends about the election. No need to sit them down or give a lecture, just drop in some truths while you’re doing stuff together.

  55. 55.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Salty Sam: The fundraising ads on Facebook all do that. “We are the underdog in this race.” “We’re being outspent in key swing states!” “Republicans out-registering Democrats in PA” (I think based on that Newsweek article that was in turn based on data mostly from before the Biden->Harris switch). They’ve been running the same ads for weeks. It’s how you get the dough.

  56. 56.

    Scout211

    This is not a palate cleanser, but it’s important.

    The number of women in Texas who died while pregnant, during labor or soon after childbirth skyrocketed following the state’s 2021 ban on abortion care — far outpacing a slower rise in maternal mortality across the nation, a new investigation of federal public health data finds.

    From 2019 to 2022, the rate of maternal mortality cases in Texas rose by 56%, compared with just 11% nationwide during the same time period, according to an analysis by the Gender Equity Policy Institute. The nonprofit research group scoured publicly available reports from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and shared the analysis exclusively with NBC News.

    “There’s only one explanation for this staggering difference in maternal mortality,” said Nancy L. Cohen, president of the GEPI. “All the research points to Texas’ abortion ban as the primary driver of this alarming increase.”

    “Texas, I fear, is a harbinger of what’s to come in other states,” she said.

    More at the link.

  59. 59.

    Redshift

    @Gloria DryGarden: For campaign coverage (and fundraising), “tied” is about as good as you’re going to get. Who’s going to donate to a campaign that’s doing fine and thinks they’ve already won?

    The not entirely wrong but not right thing that is part of all poll reporting is that you’re not “ahead” unless it’s outside the margin of error. Yeah, you’re not clearly ahead, but being up by 2 really does mean you’re more likely to win than being down by 2. It does matter, and that’s the shift we’ve seen. It’s still “tied” in simplistic margin-of-error terms, but that doesn’t mean nothing has changed.

  60. 60.

    Salty Sam

    I’m a little bit jealous of Tim Walz’s ‘79 IH Scout.  Back in ‘75, I had a ‘69 Scout-  I loved driving it, but it had been abused by a previous owner and was a maintenance nightmare.  Drive shaft must’ve been bottomed out on a rock, and slightly bent- I had to replace the universal joint every few months, and the only Intl Harvester parts place was a tractor warehouse about 45 miles away.

    But… watching Tim with his Scout is as much fun as watching Joe in his Corvette, so it’s all good!

  61. 61.

    Gloria DryGarden

    @Bostondreams: it better not be true. It’s more bizarre and intrusive than I can bear. Which already was, too far, too intrusive.

    I’ll get my friend to track it down. But, earlier today, a pst about 195 republicans voting against a bill to keep birth control available, national.ly. So, shit…

  66. 66.

    TBone

    @Salty Sam: had a BF with an old Scout, we beat that poor old truck but had so much fun it before it died. Drove through 4 feet of snow one time when no one else could get out their house.  Later, built a tarp-covered, gazebo style wooden deck for the roof to watch the races at Pocono – disassembled for travel and reassembled on site.

  67. 67.

    Gloria DryGarden

    @WaterGirl: oh. I need to learn and use it correctly. Very confused. Tell me more? I’ll clean it up. Feel free to correct it in my comment. Dang it. It’s one of those little nuances I’ve been asleep about.

  70. 70.

    Another Scott

    @BethanyAnne: My favorite uncle’s first merit badge was for cotton farming.  He grew a cotton plant in his backyard.

    In north-central Ohio.

    Whacky dude.  But he ended up being an Eagle Scout so he was pretty good at it.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  71. 71.

    Salty Sam

    @TBone:  I had some good times with mine as well.  Halloween ‘73 was particularly memorable for a midnight drive on an unimproved gravel switchback road down a cliff  into the Blanco River valley. On mushrooms.

  73. 73.

    Redshift

    @Gloria DryGarden:

    what # is out side the margin of error? +5?,+6?

    Depends on the poll, how many people they sampled and stuff; they vary. But that’s not the point — just take comfort in the fact that the polls have moved our way and we’re more likely to win, and what we need now is to make sure everyone who supports us actually comes out to vote. If you don’t have money you can spare to donate, don’t, and don’t feel bad about it. Make sure people you know are going to vote, join actions to help get out the vote, that’s what matters much more. Action is the antidote to despair.

  80. 80.

    zhena gogolia

    @KatKapCC: I had to look it up. They make teeth out of papier-mache, and they look at teeth with X-ray equipment. It doesn’t look as if they actually work on anyone’s teeth, thank God.

  81. 81.

    BretH

    @Flanders Other Neighbor: Beemer motorcycles are the best. Long ago I worked for a messenger company in DC where we rode old /2s and /5s – they had a fleet of them. Later I bought my own ‘65 /2 and only sold it because the braking just wasn’t the best. But those engines … mmmmm.

  82. 82.

    Another Scott

    @Gloria DryGarden: “Good” polls are +/- around 3%.

    But Redshift is right – if the numbers are X is at 47% and Y is at 45% then X is still ahead of Y in the poll even if the “margin of error” is bigger than 2%.

    All of these poll results are based on statistical models – If they repeat the poll so many hundreds or thousands of times, then 95% of the time the results would be as reported within the quoted margin of error.  But of course, there’s only one election result, not hundreds or thousands of them, so they only have so much applicability in the real world (especially if the set of sampled people is wonky).

    HTH a little!

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  83. 83.

    Redshift

    @Gloria DryGarden: As long as you’re not saying “the Democrat Party” it’s just a minor error. But basically, if it’s an adjective, you use Democratic (Democratic campaign, Democratic senator.) You only use Democrat as a noun, “she’s a Democrat.” Or you can just use “Dem” and never be wrong either way. :-)

    “The Democrat Party” was a deliberately wrong way of saying it that was created by Newt Gingrich. The idea was to give it a harsher sound and (apparently) to try to make people think of “rat,” which would be unpleasant. Nowadays I suspect most Republicans don’t even think about it, it’s just how people in their bubble talk.

  84. 84.

    Baud

    @Another Scott:

    But Redshift is right – if the numbers are X is at 47% and Y is at 45% then X is still ahead of Y in the poll even if the “margin of error” is bigger than 2%.

     
    My understanding is that the margin of error doesn’t apply to the difference, but to each number separately.

    So if Kamala is up 51% to 49% with an MOE of 3%, they means Harris is between 54% and 48%, and Trump is between 52% and 46%.

  85. 85.

    Lyrebird

    @Mousebumples: Hey I got an email from Tony the Democrat – they’re now doing postcards for Sherrod Brown woot!

    And I am starting to be less hopelessly behind at my new job, so here’s hoping…

  87. 87.

    Jeffro

    Erick Erickson on Twitter, diagnosing the GOP’s disease (well, one of them, anyway) but shying away from the cure:

    When Herschel Walker ran for Senate, I warned everyone about the deluge of opposition research that was coming out if he was the Republican nominee. Walker’s past indiscretions of affairs and funding coerced abortions were the worst kept secret in all of politics. But Donald Trump didn’t see it that way. Trump surmised that the all-time great Georgia running back would be a shoo-in against incumbent senator Raphael Warnock.

    After warning everyone for months, Herschel Walker won the nomination and paved the way for Raphael Warnock to remain in Washington. In the same cycle that Brian Kemp won by nine points and Ron DeSantis won by 19 points, Kemp’s historically powerful ground game still wasn’t powerful enough to drag Herschel across the finish line. The exact same thing is happening in North Carolina.

    Republican gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson was busted posting vile and obscene comments on pornography message boards during a five-year span over a decade ago. While I only knew the rumors of Mark Robinson’s indiscretions, many people in North Carolina have known the explicit details of his Nazi comparisons and fixation on transgender porn for years.

    Mark Robinson joins a very long list of poorly vetted candidates who earned the Republican nomination because they could pronounce Jesus with five syllables and whispered sweet melodies in the ear of Donald Trump. The difference this time is Mark Robinson may have just put North Carolina in the hands of Democrats and cost Donald Trump the election.

    I guess he’s also technically bemoaning the wrong problem here.  “Disease, what disease?”

  88. 88.

    Craig

    @Redshift: yeah, Richmond is a much different town than it used to be. Every time I go back I have more and more rational talks with strangers in bars and restaurants.

  90. 90.

    Scout211

    @Jeffro: guess he’s also technically bemoaning the wrong problem here.

    What? Erick is very clear: “Democrats are so mean to us.  They exploited our vetting problem!”

  91. 91.

    Another Scott

    @Baud:

    Pew agrees with you.

    2. How do I know if a candidate’s lead is ‘outside the margin of error’?

    News reports about polling will often say that a candidate’s lead is “outside the margin of error” to indicate that a candidate’s lead is greater than what we would expect from sampling error, or that a race is “a statistical tie” if it’s too close to call. It is not enough for one candidate to be ahead by more than the margin of error that is reported for individual candidates (i.e., ahead by more than 3 points, in our example). To determine whether or not the race is too close to call, we need to calculate a new margin of error for the difference between the two candidates’ levels of support. The size of this margin is generally about twice that of the margin for an individual candidate. The larger margin of error is due to the fact that if the Republican share is too high by chance, it follows that the Democratic share is likely too low, and vice versa.

    For Poll A, the 3-percentage-point margin of error for each candidate individually becomes approximately a 6-point margin of error for the difference between the two. This means that although we have observed a 5-point lead for the Republican, we could reasonably expect their true position relative to the Democrat to lie somewhere between –1 and +11 percentage points. The Republican would need to be ahead by 6 percentage points or more for us to be confident that the lead is not simply the result of sampling error.

    In Poll B, which also has a 3-point margin of error for each individual candidate and a 6-point margin for the difference, the Republican lead of 8 percentage points is large enough that it is unlikely to be due to sampling error alone.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  93. 93.

    WaterGirl

    @Lyrebird: New jobs are hard!  They say you only remember 25% of what you are told on your first day. :-)

    New place, new people, new responsibilities.  It can still be overwhelming, even if it’s a good new job.

  95. 95.

    BethanyAnne

    @Another Scott: I got my Eagle in 1988. About a decade ago, an Eagle registry called me to ask if I wanted to be listed. I asked about transition, and the person had to check. They came back with “Once an Eagle, always an Eagle.” , which was really nice. Now Scouts don’t filter on gender, but it was cool to hear that then.

  100. 100.

    WaterGirl

    @karen marie: LOL.  You do make an excellent point!

    Any fundraising email I get that has bright yellow and red and bold and it’s panic panic panic…

    I immediately unsubscribe and tell them that they shitty email looks like it came from Republicans and their crappy fear-mongering doesn’t work on Democrats.

    *I should say, though, that I get very few fundraising messages because I only donate through our thermometers, so they don’t get my contact info.

    But some groups buy email addresses from the Democratic party, and I nip those in the bud right away if they look like the ones I was describing above.

  103. 103.

    seefleur

    @Salty Sam:

    When Mr. Fleur and I lived in northern WY way back in the ’70’s. We had a ’65 Scout – three speed on the column, cost us $850. That thing could go ANYWHERE. We would take it out off-roading outside of Gillette – so much fun. And it was relatively easy and cheap to work on, up to a point. We hit that point when we bottomed out and tore up the undercarriage something awful. In spite of my husband’s ability to fix anything with duct tape and wire coat hangers, we eventually had to admit that we had managed to killed the transmission and the poor vehicle ended up being parted out. But by that time, we were poor college students (U of WY) and needed every cent we could get. I still miss that vehicle – it wasn’t fast, but it could have climbed Mt. Everest.

  104. 104.

    Gloria DryGarden

    @karen marie: I’m NOT shocked that a fundraising email asks for money. I have been hopeful because of polls sometimes showing Harris is ahead by 5%. So it was a big bummer to read their implication that it’s tied.  I suppose I could delete all those senders; it appeared to be a campaign for Kamala Harris; I’ve donated through act blue, so they totally have my info…

    You’re welcome to think I’m a stupid idiot; I know I’m not as sophisticated as most of the folks here are.

    I don’t know what a sock-puppet is, I’m not up on much internet slang and political lingo, so I looked it up. It sounds like it means you think I’m planting information or trying to gather information, and that I’m not to be trusted. It sounds like an insult, or an important warning to others. Am I understanding this correctly?

    Im not even sure what I’ve said that looks like this. I would at least like to understand how I’m being perceived this way.

  106. 106.

    Gloria DryGarden

    @Redshift: thank for clarifying this. I sure don’t want to sound like the republicans in their weird bubble.

    There’s just stuff I don’t know, sometimes. Greatly appreciated

  107. 107.

    Geminid

    @Gloria DryGarden: I’ve followed your comments for months now and I would never say you are a sock puppet.

    I once messed up.on the “Democrat/Democratic” question. I knew better, but I changed the wording of my comment and neglected to change the   noun to the adjective. Big mistake! People jumped on me like I was a Republican troll.

    There is a broader phenomenon here. Some people judge others as if they themselves have never made a mistake. I say fuck’em.

  108. 108.

    Another Scott

    @Gloria DryGarden: If it’s any consolation, I don’t have any problems with your comments.  I think you’re fine.  You have been a great addition here, and I enjoy your enthusiasm in the Garden Chat threads (and elsewhere).

    Hang in there.  :-)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  109. 109.

    Gloria DryGarden

    @Redshift: thank for clarifying this. I sure don’t want to sound like the republicans in their weird bubble.

    There’s just stuff I don’t know, sometimes. Greatly appreciated

     

    @Another Scott: thank you. I’m pretty upset. Really appreciate it.

  111. 111.

    Ruckus

    @Gloria DryGarden:

    People that want others repressed because they cannot think, understand, believe that the world shouldn’t be exactly only one way. They seem to misunderstand the concept of this country in so many ways that it’s almost like they are living in 1960s soviet Russia, are in the party of the leader of the day and think that the world and all the people in it must be of one mind and the concept of living is that EVERYTHING AND EVERYONE are exactly alike.

    That may work, with enough effort, control and punishment for not breathing (and everything else) in unison. But in the real world things don’t work like that.

  112. 112.

    Gloria DryGarden

    Thanks baud, and another Scott, and redshift, for clarifying the margin of error Q. It sounds like part of it is per each candidate, the positive vs negative / favorability polls.

    It sounds like a form of statistics. I took a class in that once, by accident. And it was weird and different than any math I’d ever previously danced with.  Most math deals with measurable real things. It was the strangest driest thing, almost enough to break up with math, which was one of my first loves.

  113. 113.

    Ruckus

    @Another Scott:

    It was far cheaper to manufacture that than everything electric, back then. Especially back then. Today, look what we are doing. Over time electricity can be more costly than what is needed to participate in these discussions or at least closely approach the level of it. Sure some may spend more money to be more comfortable doing it but it doesn’t really cost all that much in today’s money.

  115. 115.

    Ruckus

    @Timill:

    As a person who’s first car was a somewhat used 1960 Plymouth Valiant, and who got their drivers license before it had become all that used up, yes there were transistors and solid state items. However today your phone is much smaller than a box of enough transistors of the day to even contemplate making an actual working cell phone. Let alone that there wouldn’t be any one else to talk to on the one backpack mounted cell phone, nor any of the necessary working bits to make it work outside of the laboratory it resided in. Every supermarket had a vacuum tube checker and sold vacuum replacement tubes. All the electronics on the USN ship I was stationed on, which was completed in 1965 were transistorized but each transistor was rather huge and absolutely nothing like the thousands of them in your cell phone, other than how they worked.

  116. 116.

    Gloria DryGarden

    It’s a dead thread, but I think I’ve had my palate cleansed. Maybe I’ve even been pied. I’ll chase down my friend who had the weird far fetched video about women in Alabama, and insist she find out more.

    its distasteful to me to get insulted as a falsehood kind of person, when I’m simply unsophisticated, under-informed, and usually pretty genuine. (And lazy about my capital letters, and not always catching the misspellings and auto predict inserts).  So, a cleansing, of something.

    tomorrow is UN International day of Peace.

    sunday is equinox, 6:44 am mtn time, sun going into libra: Balance

    I’ve just been here since Beltane, early May. I’ve learned a lot, really enjoyed the clarifications, the many kind interactions and replies, the humor, and repartee. I’m really grateful to so many of you.

    I’ve mostly felt safe, to be amongst folks who are so pro choice, pro diversity, pro Democratic Party and policies. And to share outrage about things. Ive enjoyed the kind of writing this has brought out in me.

    I wanted to say thank you.

    enjoy your UN day of peace, and your equinox holiday of balance

  117. 117.

    apocalipstick

    @eclare:

    My kid lives in Minnesota, so I’ve known about him for a while. I’d say the reason is chiefly that he does not burn with personal ambition. He seems to be a man who genuinely wants to do the right thing and make the world better and often gets involved out of a “Welp, if no one’s gonna do what needs to be done, I guess I’ll do it” attitude.

  118. 118.

    apocalipstick

    @KatKapCC:

    One of the things that stunned me as a teacher was how little I had to do in order to have a positive impact or be remembered as caring. When I retired, there were students who came to me and said “You made high school bearable”, “You helped me get through a really hard time”, “You made me feel like someone cared”. That’s all very nice, but for a lot of them, all I did was make a point of saying hello and calling them by name.

  119. 119.

    SteverinoCT

    There’s a commercial from a year or more ago for some drug in which they are driving what I immediately said, “Hey! That’s an International Harvester Scout!” I have no idea why I knew that. I am not an expert car guy, more of a causally interested type who can change his own oil.

    I saw what appeared to be a legit YouTube test of clean vs. dirty air filters which seemed to show that just knocking the filter on the floor to get the worst stuff off was Good Enough; negligible difference in performance. FWIW.

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