Mistermix noted the passing of Jimmy Carter, a man whose Presidency I lived through but was simultaneously before my time, so I have nothing really personal to add to his obituary other than to say he was without question, a decent and honorable man who lived a long, full, and productive life. Good on him, and we were all lucky to have shared the earth with him.
I have been irritable today. I did feel comfortable leaving the patient alone long enough to go swimming, so that was nice. I have absolutely nothing else to report.
Medium Cool – Resilience!
zhena gogolia
Wow where is everybody?
SiubhanDuinne
@zhena gogolia: I was wondering the same thing but I hate to be frist.
Pete Downunder
I’m visiting the left coast and I’m awake, but only just. How is everyone?
zhena gogolia
@SiubhanDuinne: just don’t diagnose Terri Schiavo on John’s thread
SiubhanDuinne
@Pete Downunder:
Maybe people are just holidayed out.
Mr. Bemused Senior
Eh? Things seem lively on the other threads.
SiubhanDuinne
@zhena gogolia:
I could probably do it in all emojis.
😁
SiubhanDuinne
Don’t get too rowdy, y’all. I’m heading for bed.
Mr. Bemused Senior
The blessings of Unicode.
Night night.
John Cole
@zhena gogolia: Eleven o’clock on a Sunday during Christmas- people no doubt have to work tomorrow.
Urza
@John Cole: I sure hope so. New asian grocer nearby has been line around the building for weeks since it opened and I want them to go to work so I can check it out finally. Though reviews say its like the many many others in the area, just bigger so I haven’t had the urge to stand in line and find out.
sentient ai from the future
john cole: oh you reagan-advantaging motherfuckler
jimmy carter was the best of us. now he is dead.
mrmoshpotato
Watching YouTube.
Melancholy Jaques
@mrmoshpotato:
Watching a football game in which I do not care about either team.
Poe Larity.
@Melancholy Jaques: Still some decent games.
Tim C
John. You clearly love her, and that is something I hope she is grateful for.
Old Man Shadow
Yet between Jimmy Carter and an actual antichrist, most American Christians choose the latter.
RSA
I’ve skipped the usual holiday get-togethers; now sitting in a hotel room in Paris waiting for the city to wake up. The Notre Dame reservation system kicked me out twice before saying they were full for the day; fortunately some museums are open.
Leto
Is Mitch McConnell even in this thing?
Urza
@Leto: Reminds me, who will be in charge of the insane side of the Senate next year? McConnell isn’t well liked anymore and he’s certainly not in good health.
Jay
@RSA:
There are much worse places to be than Paris, with “nothing to do”
Unless it’s Paris, Texass.
RSA
@Jay: I’m going to make the most of my few days here!
The Audacity of Krope
@Leto: Shared. So sad. So funny.
Ruckus
@sentient ai from the future:
Few of us make it to 100. Hell some of us don’t make it to 1. (A nephew) Jimmy Carter was pretty damn good. A human that seemed to actually understand humanity, the good sides, the bad sides, the in between. Jimmy Carter was one of the best. There are others on the same level, even if they took a different path. We do not all have to walk the same line to be decent humans. That is part of the concept of this country, that we have guard rails, but not a single path. Many countries before us had a straight line for everything. And that never actually worked out well.
It actually takes different paths to create humanity. It’s like being on a road with 100 or 10,000 or 1 million lanes, none of which are exactly the same – other than the concept of work together, don’t shit on others, live a decent life, be respectful, be responsible, be resolute, be kind, let others enjoy their own path, give your kids the opportunity to follow their path – especially if is different than yours, follow a skill if you have one and make sure it’s one you enjoy.
It’s life. Sometimes it’s risky or very pleasant or rewarding or difficult or beautiful or scary, or whatever. Sometimes it’s all of that at once.
The road will have bumps, holes, rivers to cross, roadblocks, rain, snow, and any more – likely lots of humans on it. Look around and pay attention, you never know when it will get interesting or scary or dangerous. Learn at least one language well, learn as much math as you can, never stop trying to learn – it makes life more interesting. You aren’t the most important person in life – but one day you might be, if only for a second. Learn how to at least fit in – it’s not a straight jacket – it’s a form of communication. If you have kids help them explore what they want their life to have/be like, don’t decide for them. If they want to follow – great, if they want their own path – great. You’ve created another human, help them, guide them down their road.
prostratedragon
@Urza: John Thune. McConnell’d already said he was retiring from that post.
Leto
Leopards found another face.
NotMax
@prostratedragon
Possible McConnell could become president pro tem in the new Congress, putting him in the line of succession.
prostratedragon
@NotMax: True, though when he resigned it wasn’t clear that the GOP would have the majority.
KatKapCC
@Leto: “If the Republican Party wants to grow, evolve, and truly represent a diverse and forward-thinking electorate….”
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA
Bro. Pal. Buddy. Sport. Are you, and I ask this in all sincerity, fucking kidding me?
That post made me facepalm so hard I’m now smelling my own brain.
Ken
Linda Lavin RIP
Jay
@Leto:
Blah, blah, blah.
Still a ReThug.
Chetan Murthy
@KatKapCC: All these Indian-Americans who think they can do the racism like the white guys and get away with it.
SMDH.No, you have it right: facepalm so hard I’m now smelling my own brain.Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Leto:
@KatKapCC:
@Chetan Murthy:
Where have these people been for the last, oh, forever? When has the GOP ever not been a hate-filled party? The mid-20th century? Those Dixiecrats had to go somewhere and they joined up with the GOP
And seriously, it’s takes some industrial-grade delusion to ignore what Trump fundamentally is. But I see it regularly.
There was a woman I encountered at my job a few weeks back, where she made some comment about not having to worry about Social Security being cut or something for the next few years because retirement got brought up with myself and a co-worker. I ask her why she thinks that.
“Well, because Trump was elected and nothing happened then.”
I got the distinct impression she believed Trump purposely protected and would protect SS again.
“That’s because there were other people around to stop him.”
She fussed around and then said she had to leave and do other things. They all do that when I politely challenge them.
Ruckus
@John Cole:
Some of us are retired. That means we got paid to be tired over and over and over and then stopped – getting paid.
I sleep when I’m ready and get up when I wake up, unless I have a medical appointment. I have to say, even when I enjoyed the work, I am very glad I have a much slower and simpler routine. I only hope that shitforbrains and his pal don’t fuck up everything. Of course I don’t see how they won’t. Oh well if it was easy anyone could do it.
Jay
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
During the Harper Era here in Canada, I got to say to a bunch of people I used to know, when they complained about getting laid off or suddenly finding out that EI was not UI,
“Suck it up, you voted for that”.
Chetan Murthy
Shorter: what you said, Goku. What you said.
I know where you live, this is good self-preservation, as well as just being polite. I’m glad you can control yourself: I know I would have great difficulty doing so.
So many self-deluded people. So many people who think they’ll never be the one wriggling on the end of the fork. And while maybe that woman you mentioned was …. not the brightest bulb in the drawer, here we’re talking about some of the most well-educated people in the country, and they really have no goddamn excuse for not having figured this out. I mean, it’s like they decided to not bother reading the damn history books!
What, did they think Niemoller’s Confession was a fucking poem somebody wrote while punting up the Cam? Crrrrrikey.
Jay
@Chetan Murthy:
Isn’t it “down the Cam”, because they are fucking, inbred privlidged nepo punters who would never attempt to row upstream?
Chetan Murthy
@Jay: haha, I don’t actually know,
butso your argument convinced me. Truly, I just imagined some wan Cambridge student laying in a small boat, while another student listlessly pushes the boat along, ever-so-slowly. The student is lying there, composing verse.And that is -NOT- what Niemoller did. Crrrikey, these Indian-American MAGAts get me steamed.
ETA: and hell, if they think Niemoller is too goddamn -prole- for their taste, they could always look to the example of Fritz Thyssen!
mrmoshpotato
@Leto: LMAO! Genius!
Jay
@Chetan Murthy:
The sad thing about Niemoller and Thyssen is that they were both for it, before they were against it, and both had some privledge to survive and escape.
Chetan Murthy
@Jay: Yes, and our modern-day jamokes are so ignorant they don’t see the parallels.
Jay
@Chetan Murthy:
Our modern day “jamokes” think they have fortresses off shore where they will be safe from the fallout.
WTFGhost
@KatKapCC: Okay, so, what’s you’re entirely unlaughable way of speaking Republicans, in the hopes of changing their minds? Call Republicans names, or explain how stupid they are?
I mean, this is just simple context. You want to convince Republicans, so you speak in terms that you hope rouse their passions, and if the words happen to be true, that’s an afterthought.
WTFGhost
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Yes, they believe the curated sources for news they prefer, and all those news channels says Trump was/will be doing a *bang up* job. Why shouldn’t they believe?
Argumentum ad populum is a *stupid* fallacy, but it’s also an *easy* fallacy to fall into. Mom, dad, siblings, cousins, all say X_Falsehood is true, and X_Falsehood doesn’t fall apart on immediate examination, so, why assume *all those people* were wrong?
“He protected social security” – well, they just assume no one of their precious news sources would lie to them, and they agree on *so much* you know they’re not, right?
She had no ammo to fight back with, but all these sources say you’re just a liar, so they continue to believe. However contemptible you find that behavior, it’s *excruciatingly* common.
Edited to correct brain malfunction errors.
Jay
@WTFGhost:
I just don’t have any fucks to give any more.
I save my sympathy for people who deserve it.
I don’t argue.
One of my ex-Brother’s last bitches to me, was about how his kids couldn’t find decent jobs, before we went no contact.
I pointed out that “you voted for that for 3 decades, not me”.
Baud
@Chetan Murthy:
Apparently they were brought in to do it for less money.
Matt McIrvin
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): One of the disadvantages of our multilevel, power-separated, check-and-balance-ridden system is that it obscures political cause and effect. You can nearly always find someone in the system who’s in the party you hate, and someone who’s in the party you like, and apportion blame and praise according to your preconceptions. Something like a Westminster system gives the “in” party relatively unconstrained power, but with the possibility of withdrawing that power early if they can’t govern at all–and it’s much harder to deflect blame.
Professor Bigfoot
@WTFGhost: I simply cannot speak to them politely.
My hate and my rage are far too great for that.
When I find they voted Trump, I want nothing more to do with them, ever.
I retired early because I realized I couldn’t be polite to these…people anymore.
Professor Bigfoot
@Baud: [snicker][chortle][guffaw][cough][choke][guffaw again]
Kosh III
@Jay:
There are much worse places to be than Paris, with “nothing to do”
Unless it’s Paris, Texass.
or Paris, Tennassee
TBone
@Leto: thank you, I needed that
Kosh III
RIP President Carter, the last good one we had.
I remember being impressed by him the first time I saw him in early 1975. He was on the Tomorrow Show and no one outside of GA had ever heard of him.
He said he wanted to rebuild our rail system and make it like China has now done. sigh……
We might be so much better had he defeated Ronald Raygun. And Frak Teddy Kennedy for weaking him in a challenge for the 1980 nomination.
Geminid
A Ukrainian delegation headed bt Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha is visiting Damascus. Ragip Soylu shows a picture of Sybiha and Syrian leader Ahmed al-Sharaa seated in the reception room where the Iranian foreign minister met Bashar Assad five weeks ago.
TBone
Stand Up and Fight Back guy, inspiration of the day, sets an example for our Fourth Estate (courtesy of wonkette) if you need some inspiration as I do today.
https://www.newschannel5.com/news/newschannel-5-investigates/confronting-hate/phil-williams-in-reporting-on-hate-and-extremism-while-the-attacks-are-personal-so-is-the-cause
TBone
@TBone:
TBone
Fuckerberg says “hold my beer, Elno.”
https://bsky.app/profile/goldengateblond.bsky.social/post/3leiv2t5xp22b
zhena gogolia
@Baud: OMG
Professor Bigfoot
@TBone: I ran away from Nashville the moment I could and the objects of Phil’s reporting are the reason why.
I can EASILY see some of my high school classmates being part of this mob.
Most of them, in fact.
KatKapCC
@WTFGhost: I have zero hopes of changing their minds, and if you do, I fear you are on a fool’s errand.
Quaker in a Basement
Many, many years ago, when I was a student at the University of Florida, a friend of mine and I learned that Bob Dylan’s upcoming tour with The Band would make a stop in Atlanta. It was a far simpler time. There was no such thing as Ticketmaster. I called the box office at The Omni, the site of the show, and spoke to a young woman who told me tickets were not yet on sale. However, she agreed to accept a mailed payment at her work address and to hold it until the sale date. We secured seats close to the stage.
My buddy and I saw the show and when it was over and the audience was dispersing, he elbowed me and pointed to a man shaking hands a few rows in front of us. He said: “Look! That’s Jimmy Carter!”
“Who’s that?” I asked.
“He’s the governor,” my friend explained. “He’s one of the New South politicians that are changing the Democratic Party.”
“Oh,” I answered. And we went on our way.
I read later that Dylan and others from the show visited with Carter at the governor’s mansion that night. Roslyn made them breakfast.
Like I said: a much simpler time.
Gloria DryGarden
@Matt McIrvin:
I get so tangled up trying to understand both the compromises and the political cause and effect. It’s important; it gets complicated, and involves so much background knowledge, and so many names and influencing forces.
I wish it were a thing taught in schools before college. Maybe a better understanding of cause and effect would help with democrat’s causes.
Gloria DryGarden
@RSA: decades ago, you just walked in to notre dame. I’m shocked. Hope you can get in, there’s something about that site…
Gloria DryGarden
@RSA: decades ago, you just walked in to notre dame. I’m shocked. Hope you can get in, there’s something about that site…
@Ruckus: interesting comment. Life: Scary, dangerous, difficult, occasionally rewarding and pleasant. Also, “try to fit in, it’s not a straight jacket, it’s a form of communication.”
had not thought of it that way, before. Makes sense.