Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I don’t recall signing up for living in a dystopian sci-fi novel.

You’re just a puppy masquerading as an old coot.

“Alexa, change the president.”

Jack Smith: “Why did you start campaigning in the middle of my investigation?!”

Lick the third rail, it tastes like chocolate!

It’s pointless to bring up problems that can only be solved with a time machine.

No Kings: Americans standing in the way of bad history saying “Oh, Fuck No!”

He really is that stupid.

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

You would normally have to try pretty hard to self-incriminate this badly.

They love authoritarianism, but only when they get to be the authoritarians.

The Giant Orange Man Baby is having a bad day.

She burned that motherfucker down, and I am so here for it. Thank you, Caroline Kennedy.

Their freedom requires your slavery.

“A king is only a king if we bow down.” – Rev. William Barber

This chaos was totally avoidable.

Hey Washington Post, “Democracy Dies in Darkness” was supposed to be a warning, not a mission statement.

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

Come on, media. you have one job. start doing it.

You come for women, you’re gonna get your ass kicked.

The only way through is to slog through the muck one step at at time.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

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Archives for 2024

Cold Dawn Open Thread: Malignant ‘Undecided’ Liars

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Bret Stephens asks Stephanie Ruhle why Kamala Harris has not done interviews and stated clearly what her policy positions are. Ruhle responds that ‘We don’t live in Nirvana’:
Bret Stephens: “I’m an undecided voter. I’m not sure I want to vote for Kamala. My fear is that she doesn’t really have a very good command of what she wants to do as president.
It would be great for her to sit down with you, or George Stephanopoulos, or you Stephanie.
It’s not too much to ask Kamala ‘Are you for a Palestinian state, if Hamas is going to run that state?'”
Stephanie Ruhle: “If you don’t like her answer, are you going to vote for Trump? Kamala Harris is not running for perfect, she is running against Trump.
We have two choices. There are some things that you might not know her answer too.
In 2024, we know exactly what Trump will do, who he is, and the kind of threat he is to democracy.”
Bret Stephens: “The problem that a lot of people have with Kamala is that we don’t know her answer to anything.”
Ruhle: “But you know his answer to everything.”
Stephens: “People also are expected to have some idea of what the program that you’re supposed to vote for.
I don’t think it’s a lot to ask for her to sit down for a real interview.”
Ruhle: “When you move to Nirvana, I’ll be your next door neighbor. We don’t live there.”

Stephanie Ruhle thinks it’s ‘utopian’ to demand Kamala Harris go through the process that every other candidate for president has gone through, a public vetting process.
Turns out, Stephanie Ruhle and her ilk are the true ‘threats to democracy’.

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Sunday Night Open Thread: Good News About the Government Budget

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Assuming, of course, the Repub Loose Cannon Caucus(es) don’t decide to shoot themselves in the groin, again… Per the Associated Press, “Spending deal averts a possible federal shutdown and funds the government into December”:

Congressional leaders announced an agreement Sunday on a short-term spending bill that will fund federal agencies for about three months, averting a possible partial government shutdown when the new budget year begins Oct. 1 and pushing final decisions until after the November election.

Temporary spending bills generally fund agencies at current levels, but an additional $231 million was included to bolster the Secret Service after the two assassination attempts against Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, and additional money was added to aid with the presidential transition, among other things.

Lawmakers have struggled to get to this point as the current budget year winds to a close at month’s end. At the urging of the most conservative members of his conference, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., had linked temporary funding with a mandate that would have compelled states to require proof of citizenship when people register to vote.

But Johnson abandoned that approach to reach an agreement, even as Trump insisted there should not be a stop-gap measure without the voting requirement.

Bipartisan negotiations began in earnest shortly after that, with leadership agreeing to extend funding into mid-December. That gives the current Congress the ability to fashion a full-year spending bill after the Nov. 5 election, rather than push that responsibility to the next Congress and president…

House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries said Democrats would evaluate the bill in its entirety before this week’s vote, but with the agreement, “Congress is now on a bipartisan path to avoid a government shutdown that would hurt everyday Americans.” …

Johnson’s earlier effort had no chance in the Democratic-controlled Senate and was opposed by the White House, but it did give the speaker a chance to show Trump and conservatives within his conference that he fought for their request.

The final result — government funding effectively on autopilot — was what many had predicted. With the election just weeks away, few lawmakers in either party had any appetite for the brinksmanship that often leads to a shutdown.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said the same agreement could have been reached two weeks ago, but “Speaker Johnson chose to follow the MAGA way and wasted precious time.”…

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War for Ukraine Day 942: The Butcher’s Bill in Kharkiv & Zaporizhzhia Under the Glide Bomb

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A quick housekeeping note. Rosie is doing very well. Thank you all, again, for the good thoughts, well wishes, prayers, and donations.

Right now the air raid alert maps are mostly quiet.

Here’s the butcher’s bill from the overnight Russian strikes on Kharkiv:

Last night, Russia struck Kharkiv again, this time with aerial bombs targeting an ordinary residential building. As a result, 21 people were injured, including an 8-year-old child and two 17-year-old teenagers. Sixty residents were evacuated from the building. All are receiving the necessary assistance.

Throughout the week, the enemy has used over 900 guided aerial bombs, around 400 “Shahed” drones, and nearly 30 missiles of various types.

We need to strengthen our capabilities to better protect lives and ensure safety. Ukraine needs full long-range capabilities, and we are working to convince our partners of this. We will continue these discussions next week.

Russia is running up a new tab in Zaporizhzhia:

Now we wait to see how much damage, how many Ukrainians the Russian kill and wound in this attack.

Here is President Zelenskyy’s address from earlier today. Video below, English transcript after the jump.

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Medium Cool – Song Lyrics!

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Medium Cool is a weekly series related to popular culture, mostly film, TV, and books, with some music and games thrown in.  We hope it’s a welcome break from the anger, hate, and idiocy we see almost daily from the other side in the political sphere.

Arguments welcomed, opinions respected, fools un-suffered.  We’re here every Sunday at 7 pm.

kalakal dropped an idea for Medium Cool into the comments of an overnight thread.

How about one on song lyrics?

ie where the lyrics have really been meaningful/made an impact/encapsulated feelings, emotions or situation to someone. Could be personal, political or societal.

Seems like a fun idea to me, so let’s try it.

I’ll start.  Since it’s Medium Cool, I don’t mind interpreting the topic loosely.  I’ll just say that one Ramones album totally captures one period in my life.  Not the lyrics so much as the vibe of the music.  It was almost entirely a happy-fun period of my life, though it did include the only time my Dad got really mad at me.  Ever!  The Ramones were inadvertently at the center of it, and I swear my Dad wasn’t the same with me for about 6 months.  Shocking for this daddy’s girl to have my Dad mad at me at all, let alone for so long!

Let’s go!

Update: In case it’s helpful in posting lyrics, if you use Shift-RETURN instead of RETURN, you won’t get the black line in between.

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Author Jennifer Schiff – A Mocktail for Murder! (Take 2)

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Our featured writer today is our very own Jennifer Schiff.  (Her nym is J.)  Two books in one year!  Let’s give her a warm welcome!  (Running this one again because it was rudely interrupted a week ago by the golf course incident.)

If you would like your talent featured in Authors in Our Midst or Artists in Our Midst, send me an email message.  Don’t be shy!  I have no more Artists or Authors posts in the queue, so please don’t hesitate to  get in touch if you would like to be featured.

A MOCKTAIL FOR MURDER post for Balloon Juice (September 2024)

Hello again, fellow Balloon Juicers!

First of all, a big THANK YOU to every one of you who has purchased one or more of my books – and my Sanibel calendars — over the last seven (!) years. My book sales and sanity took big hits from Covid and then Hurricane Ian. And it’s been the support of my readers—and communities like Balloon Juice, which I have been reading since 2007—that has kept me going.  So, thank you. Now onto business!

As I wrote in my last post, I’ve had a busy year, writing and publishing TWO books, the second of which just came out. It’s called A Mocktail for Murder. And as the title suggests, it’s a murder mystery.

The book features the amateur sleuth from my Sanibel books, reporter Guin Jones. However, I wrote it as a standalone/sequel to those books, which you don’t have to have read to enjoy. You just need to like a good mystery or books that take place in New York City, where this one takes place.

In this book, Guin’s new husband is accused of killing his ex-wife, the founder of a new mocktail business (think Real Housewife Bethenny Frankel), but he swears he didn’t do it. Unfortunately, the police and a lot of other people don’t believe him. So investigative reporter Guin, who is now a business reporter for the FTFNYT, takes it upon herself to find the real killer and put him or her on ice.

With a cast of questionable characters (and some cute cats and dogs) and several twists and turns, A Mocktail for Murder will have you guessing whodunit until the end! (Or I hope it will!)

You can find Mocktail and my 13 other books on Amazon* (in paperback and for the Kindle), B&N Online, BAM, Bookshop, and in select bookstores. And if your bookstore or library doesn’t carry my books, they can order them for you via Ingram Distribution.

For more info about my books and me, visit Shovel & Pail Press and follow the Sanibel Island Mysteries page on Facebook.

*I know a lot of people hate Amazon, but they pay me the biggest royalty. (Ingram, the company that prints and distributes books to bookstores, is run by a bunch of TN Republicans who pay indie authors like me a pittance. But they are the only way I can get my books into bookstores and libraries.)

 

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Fire All of Your Guns at Once and Explode Into Space

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Fire All of Your Guns at Once and Explode Into Space
If you look closely behind JD, a dozen eggs is $2.99 at the store he visited, not $4.

Jamelle Bouie is a good follow on TikTok and on Bluesky.  He has a new video out where he includes some of Trump’s recent rally rhetoric and compares it to a Dave Chappelle Klan rally sketch.  Trump’s ranting about immigrants is pretty much indistinguishable.  JD has decided to take the Platonic path of the noble lie to keep the rubes in line.   They’re hammering their lies as hard as they can, yet every poll I’ve seen shows Harris gaining ground, and her favorables are still growing.  Polling also seems to show that independents are rejecting the dog and cat eating stuff.

To put it crudely but simply:  wad, shot. So what’s next?  This is a serious question.  There are 44 days left, and one-trick ponies get pretty dull in 6 weeks.

If you haven’t seen Jasmine Crockett’s questioning of some clown brought in to claim (falsely) that no money has been spent on rural broadband, it’s worth a watch, but the last piece could describe the Trump campaign as well as most other Republican efforts:

 The final thing that I will say is that this election is the best example of why y’all are so afraid of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Because then you can’t have a simpleminded, underqualified White man somehow end up ascending. Instead, you’ve got to pay attention to the qualified Black woman that is on the other side.

In addition to Trump, JD is also underqualified, and despite his Yale education, he’s simpleminded.   Trump just chickened out of a debate on 10/23 on CNN.  JD has way more discipline than Trump, but I’d bet that he won’t do the campaign any good in the VP debate, because he’s clumsy and robotic.

Panicking and trotting out the deeply racist shit that should be reserved for mailers sent, and ads aired, during the last few days of the election remains a stupid choice.

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Dan B – An Artist in a Different Medium!

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If you would like your talent featured in Authors in Our Midst or Artists in Our Midst, just send me an email message and we’ll make it happen. Don’t be shy! I have no more Artists or Authors posts in the queue, so please get in touch if you would like to be featured.

Let’s give a warm welcome to Dan B!

Dogs to Weddings!

Sometimes I had an urge to drive off when I first visit a new client’s home.  I’m glad I didn’t.

This couple’s  residence was on the boundary between a sketchy high crime neighborhood and an exclusive neighborhood.  There was regular car vandalism and they wanted a circular drive in their narrow front lot so they could get their cars off the street.  This would have turned the entire front yard into a driveway with narrow shrub beds and having two curb cuts would have violated code.

And the back was a “critical slope” so steep it would likely fail.  The front, right on the street, was their only level outdoor area but they couldn’t imagine it as a place to relax and enjoy.

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Dan B - Dogs to Weddings! 5

The house was a classic mid century modern that had the unsurprising single arborvitae planted in front.  It was obstructing the simple, but classic, lines of the house.